The Moderna vaccine will continue to work on the new UK and South African strains of Covid-19, according to test results.
The biotechnology giant said that the study produced "no significant impact" to the vaccine's effectiveness against the UK strain.
A six-fold reduction in neutralizing titers was found in the South African variant, but the company insists that levels remain high enough to be protective.
The study was carried out in collaboration with the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US.
Two doses of the jab is expected to be enough to protect the public against all strains detected to date.
The company said it is continuing testing in a bid to "further increase neutralizing titers" against all emerging strains.
Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna, said: “As we seek to defeat the Covid-19 virus, which has created a worldwide pandemic, we believe it is imperative to be proactive as the virus evolves.
"We are encouraged by these new data, which reinforce our confidence that the Moderna Covid-19 Vaccine should be protective against these newly detected variants.
“Out of an abundance of caution and leveraging the flexibility of our mRNA platform, we are advancing an emerging variant booster candidate against the variant first identified in the Republic of South Africa into the clinic to determine if it will be more effective to boost titers against this and potentially future variants.”
