Meredith WadmanScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation.Philip Dormitzer led Pfizer’s successful coronavirus vaccine research effort, which yielded a vaccine with a stunning 95% efficacy in interim results from a clinical trial last year.
That vaccine, developed with the German firm BioNTech, relies on a new technology employing messenger RNA (mRNA). It was the first to win emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for use against COVID-19 in the United States.However, recent lab studies and new clinical trial results have suggested recently emerged variants of SARS-CoV-2, the pandemic coronavirus, have evolved resistance to vaccines, including Pfizer’s.