Modern (NASDAQ: MRNA) You are at a crucial moment right now: for your COVID-19 vaccine candidate, your overall portfolio, and your investors. The company’s investigational vaccine for COVID-19 is entering phase 3 clinical trials this month. This is the key stage that could make or break the company’s hopes of bringing the product to market. And for investors, the results can mean huge profits or big losses.
Is the chance of success greater than the chance of failure? Let’s take a look at what Moderna has reported so far, as well as possible future risks.
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Moderna is a clinical stage company, which means that it has no products on the market yet. The biotech company has about 20 candidates on the way for indications including autoimmune disorders, cancer, and infectious diseases. Much depends on a possible approval of the COVID-19 vaccine because it would give Moderna a commercialized product.
And one more important point: the entire Moderna portfolio, including this vaccine, is based on the same technology, so the positive data here can increase investor confidence in the rest of the company’s work. Moderna uses messenger RNA (mRNA) to deliver instructions to cells in the body. These instructions tell the body to make certain proteins that can prevent or treat disease.
Promote provisional data
So far, Moderna’s news has been positive. The company reported encouraging phase 1 data, with trial participants showing levels of binding antibodies and neutralizing antibodies at the same levels or higher than those of patients recovered with COVID-19. Binding antibodies are those that alert the body to the presence of a pathogen, but most importantly, neutralizing antibodies actually block infection.
Although Moderna is moving in the right direction, the vaccine needs to be tested in some areas. In the interim report, data on neutralizing antibodies were only available for eight trial participants. We must see this trend in many more before declaring victory.
Another missing piece has to do with the age of the trial participants. The provisional data referred to volunteers between 18 and 55 years old. Moderna is currently treating older groups in phase 2. This age group is extremely important to any successful vaccine because elderly patients have been among the most vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is essential that a vaccine work for them.
And finally, in phase 3, Moderna faces the challenge of showing efficacy in a study group of approximately 30,000 participants.
Operation Warp Speed
The success of Moderna’s vaccine also depends on the US government and other companies in this vaccine race. Through Operation Warp Speed, the United States government promised to help bring a vaccine to people in January. The Department of Health and Human Services has awarded almost $ 500 million to Moderna and $ 1.2 billion to AstraZeneca. The two companies are close leaders in the race, with the AstraZeneca vaccine candidate now in a phase 2/3 trial.
With the great global need for a vaccine, there is room for more than one company on the podium. But it’s clear that Moderna’s best shared performance will happen if his shot reaches the finish line first or is better than his rivals’.
Moderna soared as much as 309% this year to its peak in May. The stock then fell back when company executives sold shares after publishing test data. But these sales were established in advance, before knowing what the trials could bring. Moderna’s shares are now up 215%. Wall Street predicts that the stock could gain as much as 49% from here, according to the average estimate.
Could Moderna’s shares make you a millionaire?
In the short term, everything will depend on the results of the clinical trials of the COVID-19 vaccine. As we have seen, stocks are sensitive to good and bad news on the subject.
So far, I am encouraged by the test data. But given the strong link between this development program and Moderna’s stock price, I’ll wait to see more data on neutralizing antibodies and vaccine results in older trial participants, and whether AstraZeneca takes a clear advantage or stay behind, before I ‘ll call Modern Millionaire.
