China National Biotech Group (CNBG) on Tuesday announced that three mRNA vaccines to fight monkey pox have been proven effective.

The research is led by Yang Xiaoming, chairman of CNBG, a unit administered by Sinopharm.

In the study, the research team tested three mRNA vaccines, VGPox 1-3, that encoded monkeypox proteins M1R and A35R, including A35R-M1R fusions (VGPox 1 and VGPox 2) and a combination of encapsulated full-length mRNAs for A35R and M1R (VGPox 3).

Results showed that the novel mRNA vaccines, which express a fusion protein composed of a truncated form of A35R and a full-length M1R, can provide strong immunity and protection against the poxvirus, the study said, noting that all three vaccines induced anti-A35R total IgGs as early as day seven following a single vaccination.

Specifically, VGPox 1 and VGPox 2 can induce high levels of both A35R and M1R IgGs and are highly effective at neutralizing live virus infection in cell cultures, but not the mixture of the two individual mRNAs (VGPox 3). VGPox 3 produced M1R specific antibodies much later, and consequently the sera collected at early time points were not able to neutralize the virus, according to the study.

The research results were published Tuesday on bioRxiv, a preprint platform.

The WHO has reported over 79,000 monkey pox cases from more than 100 countries as of Nov. 15, 2022.