Omicron booster candidate shows 'superiority' against variant, Moderna says
Source: Washington Post
Preliminary data on Moderna’s omicron-targeting coronavirus vaccine booster candidate showed that the shot gives recipients a “superior” antibody response against the variant, Moderna announced Wednesday, expressing hope that the company can make the new shots available by late summer. The booster candidate, which provided an eightfold rise in immunization against omicron, also increased antibodies against the alpha, beta, gamma and delta variants.
Soon after omicron’s discovery last year, Moderna said it was developing shots specifically designed to fight the variant. Rivals Pfizer and BioNTech announced the same. In April, Moderna released data that showed a booster shot that the company began working on in February 2021, tailored to fight the original version of the virus and the beta variant, increased the level of virus-blocking antibodies against several variants, including omicron, better than a regular booster.
Data from the recent clinical trial, which involved 437 participants, showed that Moderna’s omicron-targeting booster would probably provide longer protection against variants a month after administration when compared with earlier versions of its coronavirus vaccine, Moderna said, making it the company’s “lead candidate for a Fall 2022 booster.” It will submit the data to regulators in the coming weeks. The booster “was generally well-tolerated,” with side effects comparable to earlier boosters, the company said.
New daily coronavirus infections are slowly climbing in the United States. The country recorded a 38 percent uptick in new cases during the past week, according to figures compiled by The Washington Post, as protection from booster shots and previous infections wanes and as more people go about their lives without masks.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/08/moderna-booster-omicron-coronavirus-trial/
I had my 2nd booster of Moderna on May 12 (about 6 months after my first one November 15, 2021), where I was trying to time it for the October/November 2022 time frame (as a "5/6-month" boost), with the hope that a new booster would be ready by then.
I will say that the 2nd Moderna booster that I got surprisingly elicited zero side effects - i.e., it was like when I have gotten annual flu shots. I guess my body was like yeah...yeah...yeah...whatever...
= new reply since forum marked as read
and found a link for a pre-print in an earlier article from April - https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1555201/v1
I went through 50+ pages of data but found a graph that might be showing this visually but my brain is fried this morning so I haven't actually calculated anything using it yet...
Each quadrant in the above represents a variant - the "original" ( "Wuhan" ), the "Beta", the "Omicron", and the "Delta" (and as a note, "Beta" never really took hold here in the U.S., the first big variant after the original was "Alpha", which was also prevalent in Europe).
For each bar graph in a quadrant, there are 6 bars and the first 3 bars for each graph (which are plots over time), represent the results using the original vax entity (mRNA-1273) and the second 3 represent (again over time), the results from the new "Omicron-specific" entity (mRNA-1273.211). The time plots are for 0 months, about 1 month, and the "181" days is just about 26 weeks or 6 months.
So I think that "8-fold" reference may be how much better the new vax entity protects against Omicron compared to the original.
I looked up the word "titer" and it means concentration.
Looking at the Omicron Variant graph
.................... MRNA-1273 mRNA-1273.211
Prebooster ........... 38 ......... 38
Day 29 ............ 529 ......... 1408
Day 181 ............146 ......... 317
Day 29
So just taking MRNA-1273, the original Moderna, the antibody concentration increased 13.9 fold by day 29 (edit: correction made)
Whereas with mRNA-1273.211 it increased 37 fold by day 29 -- to a level 2.67 times that of MRNA-1273
Day 181
So just taking MRNA-1273, the original Moderna, the antibody concentration increased 3.8 fold by day 181
Whereas with mRNA-1273.211 it increased 8.34 fold by day 181 -- to a level 2.17 times that of MRNA-1273
I bold-faced the "8.34" since it matches 8 fold when rounded... Then I bold-faced 3.8 fold above since its the comparable number for original Moderna.
In sum, at day 181, original Moderna increased the antibody concentration 3.8 fold while the new Moderna increased it by 8.3 fold. It seems to me to be saying?
to get the delta between vaccine entities, just scrolling through those pre-print pages of data looking for some kind of chart or graph, caused my brain to do this -- 
I think the graph showed up around pg 53 out of 55 or something 
And yes, I believe those values for the titer are the quantity of antibodies per unit/volume (could be per ?l or whatever).
I think they are just comparing the Day 181 (for your purposes of picking that date point) using mRNA-1273 to Day 181 using mRNA-1273.211 (the latter being the new one, and doing that across 4 different variants).
Just a little soreness in my arm.
Will be monitoring for if/when it gets approved! 
