The company's Covid-19 treatment may be less effective against the heavily mutated omicron variant of the virus.
The FDA approved the emergency use of the Covid treatment last year.
One of the antibodies should take a hit, but the other should be less so, according to CNBC's Squawk Box on Tuesday. He said that they had to look at how much the hit was, but more importantly, they had to get ready for the next one.
There may be reduced neutralization activity of both vaccine-induced and monoclonal antibody conveyed, according to a statement by Regeneron.
The company pointed out that there isn't yet any data showing the impact of omicron on vaccines.
The cocktail is very effective against the variant of the U.S. that is called delta.
We are going to have to keep cycling our monoclonals, just like we have to adapt our vaccines, because we have a large number of them.
The omicron variant of the virus causes Covid-19 because it has more than 30 changes to the spikeProtein, which is the mechanism the virus uses to bind to human cells. The World Health Organization says that some of the genes are associated with higher transmission and lower protection.
Omicron is believed to be more infectious than previous versions, but its impact on the strength of vaccines is not known. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told CNBC on Monday that vaccines could be less effective against omicron, but more data is needed.
The World Health Organization and scientists said it could take weeks to understand if omicron is likely to cause illness or escape immunity.
Several companies announced on Monday that they had begun work on vaccines tailored for omicron that would be less effective against the new variant.
The report was contributed to by the news agency.
