AstraZeneca to test combining COVID-19 vaccine with Russian shot

Mumbai: AstraZeneca said it will work with Russia’s Gamaleya Institute to assess if the efficacy of their Covid-19 vaccines would improve if they were combined.

The vaccine developed by AstraZeneca, in partnership with the University of Oxford, and Gamaleya’s Sputnik V candidate are both based on a weakened version of a common cold virus. The Sputnik V vaccine has two adenovirus vectors, one of which will be used by AstraZeneca in the trial.

The British-Swedish biopharmaceutical company said combinations of vaccines have the potential to elicit a more robust and lasting immune response.


“Research on different vaccine regimens is needed in order to assess the feasibility of creating more flexible vaccination programmes that give clinicians a wider choice of prevention approaches,” AstraZeneca said in a statement on Friday.

“This research will allow AstraZeneca’s scientists to study the possibility of boosting their vaccine’s efficacy through the application of this combined approach,” said Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Development Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia’s sovereign wealth fund which has backed development of the Sputnik V vaccine.

Gamaleya Institute said in a research document that the human adenoviral vector is a common cold virus, which has been with humankind for over 100,000 years. The vector and its genetic material do not pose any hazard to the body.