Moderna announces vaccine even more effective than Pfizer’s

According to Moderna, the treatment would be almost 95% effective. Finally, the American biotech announces better conservation of its product.

Moderna intends to regain pole position from Pfizer in the race for the vaccine against Covid-19. A week just after the promising announcements of the American giant as to the effectiveness of its treatment developed with BioNtech, the American biotech led by Marseille-based Stéphane Bancel counter-attacks and publishes even more shocking preliminary results.

Moderna claims that its RNA Messenger vaccine candidate is 94.5% effective. This is better than the results presented by Pfizer. These results, also preliminary, come from its phase III clinical trial, “comprising more than 30,000 people” and carried out in the United States, “in association with the American Institute of Health (NIH) and Barda (the American authority for advanced R & D in the biomedical field, Editor’s note), ”the statement said.

No cases of severe Covid observed

These results to be confirmed come after the follow-up of 95 cases of patients in the clinical trial infected with Covid-19. Of these, 90 were in the placebo group and only 5 in the one receiving Moderna’s vaccine candidate with the code name: mRNA-1273. The 95 contaminated participants include “15 people over 65 and 20 people from different communities” (Latinos, African-Americans, Americans of Asian origins, etc.).

Other striking information from these preliminary results: 11 cases of severe Covid have already been observed by Moderna during this phase III clinical trial. All took place in the placebo group. This seems to indicate that the vaccine candidate of the American biotech would fully protect against severe cases of infection. Finally, the preliminary analysis of the results confirms the safety of mRNA-1273 already observed during the two previous phases of the clinical trial.

Easier storage

In terms of production, Moderna still expects “to have around 20 million doses [of its vaccine candidate] ready to be shipped to the United States” by the end of 2020. The American biotech also estimates that it is still on the right way to produce between 500 million and 1 billion doses worldwide by 2021.

There remains the question of the conservation of the treatment: here again, Moderna ensures that it is doing better than Pfizer. The vaccine candidate of the American pharmaceutical giant requires polar cold (-70 ° C), when the biotech states that its treatment can now be stored “30 days” in “a conventional medical or home refrigerator” (between 2 and 8 ° C. , as for a classic vaccine or for chocolate). Until now, it was only possible to keep it at this temperature for 6 days. In the long term, Moderna says, mRNA-1273 can be stored for 6 months at -20 ° C this time. What to facilitate the global logistics necessary for the vaccination of a maximum of people.

Emergency use request

Following these very encouraging results, the biotech intends to ask the American health agency (FDA) for an emergency use authorization for its treatment. This request is expected to come “in the coming weeks” and Moderna expects this to be based on the final analysis of 151 cases of Covid-19 in the patient cohort, and “a median follow-up [of participants ] over 2 months’.

The Moderna title should jump this Monday morning on Wall Street. In pre-stock market trading, it was expected to rise by more than 13%. When Pfizer’s preliminary results were announced, global markets were also on fire.