Moderna, melanoma vaccine and Merck
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Moderna has been looking for its next blockbuster drug after a wildly successful COVID era.
CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Céline Gounder, who has had melanoma herself, said Moderna's experimental trial is "a big win for mRNA vaccines against cancer."
Moderna and Merck's neoantigen treatment, combining a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine with the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab significantly reduced the risk of melanoma recurrence in a phase 3 trial.
Moderna has now swung violently in both directions for three straight sessions on the same unchanged clinical news, and the options chain hints at why this whipsaw is far from over.
Moderna shares jumped this week after the company announced encouraging results from a late-stage melanoma trial.
Moderna Inc (NASDAQ:MRNA, XETRA:0QF)'s melanoma trial success is prompting Wall Street to assign new platform value to the company's oncology pipeline, Jefferies said, as investors look beyond its COVID-dependent revenue base.
Investors had been pessimistic about the probability of success for the personalized cancer vaccine intismeran autogene, so the Phase 3 win was a welcome surprise.