If you’re 50 or older, it’s possible that you’ll be eligible to get a new mRNA flu vaccine from Moderna as early as this fall, depending on what happens this month with FDA and CDC approval. This is the same vaccine that the FDA first refused to even review, until reversing course after pushback.
This week, an FDA advisory panel voted to recommend Moderna’s new vaccine for adults 50 and older, but there are still two major hurdles before it’s actually available for Americans. It needs to be formally approved by the FDA and then it generally must also be formally recommended by the CDC’s advisory committee, the ACIP, which has been temporarily blocked from meeting by a court order. It remains to be seen whether an ACIP recommendation will still be required given these unusual circumstances.
The new vaccine may be particularly advantageous in years when there’s a mismatch between the strains included in the standard flu vaccine (usually a group of 3 strains decided in the winter or early spring), and the actual strains that end up circulating during the flu season. Reformulating a standard flu shot can take many months with egg- and cell-culture based technologies, but mRNA tech allows manufacturers to make quick changes to address new mutations in the flu virus that’s going around. Experts say mRNA technology could cut the time in half or even a third, from six months down to two or three.
We’ll be keeping an eye on this over the next month or two, and we’re happy to answer more questions about it if these become a viable option for this fall.
Sources: Medpage Today, NBC
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