Goldman Says Moderna Vaccine Filing May Be Sooner Than Expected
Goldman Predicts U.S. May Have a Covid-19 Vaccine by End of Year
(Bloomberg) -- Moderna Inc. could file interim results on its Covid-19 vaccine candidate with U.S. regulators sooner than many investors are expecting, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said.
The biotech is slated to start a 30,000-patient trial July 27 and the chances of an early filing on the results is underappreciated, analysts led by Salveen Richter said. The likelihood of getting a successful vaccine in 2020 are enhanced further by four other vaccine programs slated to enter into the final research phase of testing sometime this summer, according to Goldman.
Those experimental inoculations expected to start large-scale testing are from Pfizer Inc. in partnership with BioNtech SE; AstraZeneca Plc with University of Oxford; Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Sinovac Biotech Ltd.
How quickly a vaccine could win regulatory approval has been the subject of much debate on Wall Street, especially as analysts weigh the political implications if one were to come before U.S. November elections. Russian attempts to hack into international research centers that are racing to develop a Covid-19 vaccine threaten to further darken that contest.
Moderna and Pfizer’s RNA-based vaccines may be the first to pass regulatory hurdles while appearing the most promising for broad use in a larger population, Richter wrote in a note to Goldman clients. Shots derived from engineered viruses known as adenoviral vectors, like those from AstraZeneca and CanSino Biologics, are more likely to only work in select groups, she said.
Still with nearly eight billion people across the planet, “multiple vaccines against Covid-19 will be required to treat the global population,” Goldman says.
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