Moderna COVID-19 vaccine validation

On Monday November 16, Moderna Inc. said that its experimental vaccine was 94.5% effective in preventing disease and met the statistical criteria pre-specified in the study protocol for efficacy The National Institutes Of Health (NIH) appointed Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) for the Phase III study of mRNA-1273, its vaccine candidate against COVID-19, informed Moderna of the results of its study. This follows the announcement last week that Pfizer and its collaborator, BioNTech had announced positive efficacy results from their Phase III late-stage study of their potential COVID-19 vaccine. “This is a pivotal moment in the development of our COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Since early January, we have chased this virus with the intent to protect as many people around the world as possible. All along, we have known that each day matters. This positive interim analysis from our Phase III study has given us the first clinical validation that our vaccine can prevent COVID-19 disease, including severe disease,” said Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna. On 24 March 2020, EuroTimes reported that Moderna had begun the first clinical trial of a vaccine targeting coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has begun at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, USA. "Once the mRNA-1273 vaccine targets the spikes on the coronavirus surface that attach to and allow it to enter human cells," EuroTimes reported. "Rather than using neutralised virus to develop the vaccine from scratch, the mRNA-1273vaccine was based on an existing vaccine platform developed for related corona viruses causing severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)."

Tags: covid-19 vaccine, moderna