Shares of Moderna surged by more than 10% in premarket trading Thursday after it announced that the Food and Drug Administration cleared its coronavirus vaccine for phase 2 trial, what the company called a “crucial step.”
The company said it will begin phase 2 trials with 600 participants shortly and is finalizing plans for a phase 3 trial as early as this summer.
“We are accelerating manufacturing scale-up and our partnership with Lonza puts us in a position to make and distribute as many vaccine doses of mRNA-1273 as possible, should it prove to be safe and effective,” CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement. The company hopes to start a phase 3 trial early this summer here, which would potentially approve the first batch as soon as 2021, he said.