Johnson & Johnson (announced preliminary results from an independent study, including a subset of participants from the Janssen-sponsored COV2008 study, conducted by Dan Barouch, M.D., Ph.D., et al. of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), which showed that a booster shot of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine administered at six months after a two-dose primary regimen of Pfizer-BioNTech increased both antibody and T-cell responses. These results demonstrate the potential benefits of heterologous boosting (mix-and-match). The article describing these results have been posted on medRxiv

"There is early evidence to suggest that a mix-and-match boosting approach may provide individuals with different immune responses against Covid-19 than a homologous boosting approach," said Dan Barouch, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at BIDMC.

"These results provide valuable scientific insights for our vaccine when used as a mix-and-match booster and can help inform boosting strategies with the goal to curb the pandemic," said Mathai Mammen, M.D., Ph.D., Global Head, Janssen Research & Development, Johnson & Johnson. "These data add to the growing body of evidence demonstrating that a mix-and-match booster dose of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine successfully increases humoral responses and cellular responses against the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, as well as the Beta and Delta variants."

These Phase 2 data are reinforced by preliminary results from the UK COV-BOOST clinical study published in The Lancet which demonstrated that following primary vaccination with two doses of either BNT162b2 (n=106) or ChAdOx1 nCov-19 (n=108), a booster dose of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine increased both antibody and T-cell responses.