Why Moderna Is Dropping Today
Shares of Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) -- a biotech company that has been racing to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 -- are down by 11.5% as of 2:32 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, and this despite the company not reporting any news. However, we can safely assume that Moderna's losses on the market today have something to do with Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX) announcing that it has enrolled the first participants for a phase 1/2 clinical trial for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, NVX-CoV2373.
Moderna's stock has been on a tear of late thanks to the company's efforts to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus. The biotech company was one of the first to kick off a phase 1 clinical trial for its investigational vaccine, mRNA-1273. Moderna recently said it plans to start a phase 2 trial shortly, and while it looks like Moderna has the lead in this race, Novavax isn't too far behind. Today, Novavax announced that it is planning to conduct a study for NVX-CoV2373 in two parts. The phase 1 part of the study will be held in Australia and will enroll approximately 130 healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 59.
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Source Fool.com
