The race for the Covid-19 vaccine is launched and investors are on the lookout to find the company that will discover this Grail before everyone else. The announcement of encouraging results on the Moderna vaccine project triggered a surge in the title. In one month, the title soared from 45 dollars at the end of April to more than 66 dollars on Monday.
The American laboratory Moderna announced Monday "positive interim data" of the initial phase of clinical trials of its vaccine project against the new coronavirus on a small number of volunteers.
This vaccine, called mRNA-1273, appeared to elicit an immune response in eight people who received it on the same scale as that seen in those who were naturally infected with the virus.
Provisional results
These are provisional results. Full data from the Phase 1 trial, the very first in the development of a vaccine that includes 45 participants in this case, is not yet known. So far, three groups of 15 patients have received three different doses of the vaccine once or twice.
This clinical trial is being carried out by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the United States government, which has invested nearly half a billion dollars in this project.
These results will allow us to continue with phase 2 on a larger number of people. If this step is also taken, phase 3, the last and most important to validate the effectiveness of the vaccine, should start in July.
In addition, tests conducted in parallel on mice also showed that the vaccine prevented the virus from replicating in their lungs, according to the company.
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Beyond these trials, large-scale production is also necessary. This is why Moderna recently joined forces with Lonza in the United States to be able to produce large-scale vaccines.
