CEO of Moderna Thinks Company’s COVID-19 Vaccine is Likely to be Successful

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel sees ‘high probability’ of success with the company’s Covid-19 vaccine.

The 10-year old company is the front-runner in the race for a Covid-19 vaccine and is about to begin a 30,000-person efficacy trial in July, the first planned in the U.S.

Recent history suggests a new vaccine entering human clinical trials has about a 1-in-3 chance of getting FDA approval.

Bancel believes the chances of his company’s novel coronavirus vaccine at closer to 80% to 90%.
“We know our platform,” Bancel said in a recent interview. “It works on MERS, Zika and CMV and so on. When you have the right sequence … you will get neutralizing antibodies.”

The Cambridge-based company has enrolled more than half of its mid-stage study of 600 people already for the trial next month. All before the complete data from the first stage of the trials has been fully reported.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently said the Phase 3 trial of Moderna’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine will include study of 30,000 patients who will be as young as 18 and include elderly Americans as well.

Fauci said the trial will include primarily U.S. sites, but also include international sites enrolling 30,000 individuals in a “randomized placebo” controlled trial of Moderna’s vaccine against the Coronavirus strain Covid-19.

“We are preparing the sites for the phase 3 study,” Fauci told Dr. Howard Bauchner, editor of JAMA. “The real business end of this all is the phase three trial that starts in the first week in July.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Moderna Inc. (NASDAQ: MRNA) and have not been compensated for this
article.