Moderna Shares Hit a 4-Year High: The NYT Reports on U.S. Plans to Accelerate the Development of Cancer Vaccines

Moderna’s stock rose more than 14% on October 9, to $225 per share, reaching its highest level since January 2022, as noted by Yahoo Finance. The company’s stock was buoyed by a New York Times (NYT) article about a public-private initiative to accelerate the development of cancer vaccines, modeled after the program that helped rapidly develop COVID-19 vaccines, according to Stocktwits.

Investors see Moderna as one of the main beneficiaries of this project, notes Yahoo Finance. Along with Moderna, shares of other biotech companies also rose on Friday: Pfizer, BioNTech, and Merck gained 1.65%, 5.32%, and 2.26%, respectively, while Novavax shares jumped nearly 16%.

A large-scale project—a public-private partnership—will launch in the U.S. in December, aimed at accelerating the development of cancer vaccines. The project will involve the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nonprofit NIH Foundation, scientists, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, public organizations, charitable foundations, and patients, who will work together to develop and test vaccines.

“We hope it will be similar to the development of COVID-19 vaccines,” Stacy Adam, a senior clinical officer at the NIH Foundation, told the newspaper, referring to a similar partnership that led to the rapid development of a treatment for the coronavirus during the pandemic. Initially, she said, the program will focus on potential vaccines for pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, colorectal cancer, and certain types of childhood cancers.

In an unpublished analytical report reviewed by The New York Times, the initiative is described as something that is now possible in the field of vaccines but was “largely theoretical just ten years ago.” And although there are no guarantees that the research will yield the desired results, enthusiasm for the project is high, the newspaper notes. “We can do things that would otherwise be impossible,” said Dr. Anthony LeTai, director of the National Cancer Institute, referring to the new resources being allocated to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. “We can take big risks on new ideas.”

According to Letay, the first phase of the public-private initiative will consist of small-scale studies and will take about three years. The larger-scale trials in the second phase will take at least four years and will be conducted through a nationwide network of clinical centers. These trials are expected to yield definitive results. The ultimate goal, according to Dr. Adam, is that “in seven to ten years, anyone who goes to the doctor will be able to get the vaccine.”

The New York Times does not name the companies that will participate in the project, but it mentions the results of a study of an experimental mRNA vaccine by Merck and Moderna that were released in August: in patients with late-stage melanoma, it delayed the recurrence and spread of the cancer. So far, this is the only cancer vaccine trial “large enough to yield definitive results” (it involved 1,137 participants), The New York Times writes about the Merck and Moderna development. The companies plan to present the full data from these trials later in October. As a result, investors have viewed Moderna as one of the project’s main beneficiaries, according to Stocktwits. The biotech portal calls it “the best-known company specializing in mRNA drugs”—developments that contain an mRNA molecule with “instructions” for the body’s cells. Upon receiving it, the cells themselves produce the desired protein—for example, a viral fragment or a tumor protein—and the immune system learns to recognize and attack it. The mRNA itself breaks down after a while and is not incorporated into DNA. Some COVID-19 vaccines work on the same principle.

After the results of a cancer vaccine trial were published in August, Moderna’s stock more than doubled. Since the beginning of the year, it has risen by more than 660%. Some analysts have already called this rise excessive—a view held, in particular, by Citi analyst Jeff Micham: In late September, he downgraded his recommendation on the pharmaceutical company’s stock from “hold” to “sell” and set a price target of $80. This target is more than 64% below Moderna’s most recent closing price.

Overall, Wall Street is taking a cautious approach to the company’s stock: there are 16 “hold” recommendations, six “buy” recommendations, and five “sell” recommendations. The average price target of $116.84 per share is 48% below Moderna’s closing price on October 9.

Before the market opened on October 9, the pharmaceutical company’s shares also returned to the Nasdaq 100 index, where they replaced Warner Bros. Discovery, according to Stocktwits. In addition, the portal notes that Bank of America analysts raised their price target for Moderna shares from $170 to $200 per share on Friday (the stock’s market value has already exceeded the new target). BofA’s rating for the pharmaceutical company’s stock remained unchanged at “Neutral.”

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor