Moderna Shares Skyrocket 90% Toward Best Day Ever—Here’s Why
Moderna’s stock soared by more than 90% as trading opened Wednesday, nearly doubling the biotech giant’s share price after the firm announced positive results from its first-ever late-stage trial of an experimental cancer vaccine.
Shares of Moderna rocketed by 93% to around $121.90 on Wednesday, pacing what would be the stock’s best-ever trading session after surging by more than 100% in premarket trading.
That came after Moderna and Merck announced their personalized cancer vaccine helped cut the recurrence of melanoma—a form of skin cancer—in a late-stage trial involving more than 1,100 patients, and that the experimental drug significantly extended the time patients lived without their melanoma returning.
The vaccine is an mRNA-based shot combined with Merck’s immunotherapy drug Keytruda, marking the first successful final-stage study for any mRNA-based cancer therapy.
Merck’s stock jumped 6.5% in early trading following the announcement.
112,000. That’s how many new cases of melanoma are diagnosed in the U.S. each year, with about 8,510 people expected to die of melanoma, according to the American Cancer Society. The group warned that lighter skin color is a major risk factor and that risk increases as people age.
The lowest level for Moderna’s stock came during its first trading session this year, dropping to $29.81 on Jan. 2 before surging nearly 300% to its premarket value on Wednesday.
Wall Street had anticipated results from Moderna’s latest mRNA vaccine, which have come under fire from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy, a noted vaccine skeptic who criticized mRNA COVID-19 vaccines like Moderna's, has said he would cancel contracts and grants worth nearly $500 million to develop such vaccines. Leerink Partners analyst Mani Foroohar wrote in June that results from Moderna’s late-stage trial would mark a make-or-break event for its stock, with expectations for the experimental medication to potentially work across multiple types of cancer. Merck and Moderna have said they are studying the vaccine in several trials of other tumors, like non-small cell lung cancer and bladder cancer.