Dr. Anthony Fauci is reportedly expecting that early data from Moderna’s (NSDQ:MRNA) COVID-19 vaccine candidate is not far away.
Following Monday’s news that the candidate being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech has proven to be 90% effective at preventing infection, the nation’s top infectious disease official expressed optimism over Moderna’s potential, according to a Forbes report.
Speaking at the Financial Times’ Live Global Pharmaceutical Summit, Fauci reportedly said that Moderna’s vaccine candidate could produce a similar degree of efficacy to the current frontrunner.
Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna, which is developing an mRNA technology-based candidate, like Pfizer and BioNTech, just yesterday announced that it completed case accrual for the first interim analysis of its Phase 3 study for the mRNA-1273 vaccine.
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said last month that he thinks the FDA could grant emergency use authorization (EUA) for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate in December, depending on whether it sees positive interim clinical results in November.
The company said in a news release that it has seen a significant increase in the rate of case identification over the past week, leading it to expect more than 53 cases to be included in the first interim analysis.
Moderna is preparing data from the cases for submission to the independent Data Safety Monitoring Board for analysis and recommendation, the company said.
As of Oct. 22, 2020, Moderna had completed the enrollment of 30,000 participants in the U.S. for its Phase 3 trial, with a primary endpoint of preventing symptomatic COVID-19 disease and secondary endpoints that include preventing severe COVID-19 disease and the prevention of infection by SARS-CoV-2.