Anjali Sundararaman, a student nurse at San Francisco State University, administers a dose of Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Cuixia Xu during a vaccination clinic at the Southeast Health Center in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco, California on Monday, Feb. 8, 2021.
Stephen Lam | San Francisco Chronicle | Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images
Moderna shares rose Thursday after it announced it’s developing a two-in-one vaccine booster shot that protects against both Covid-19 and the seasonal flu.
The new vaccine, which the company is calling mRNA-1073, combines Moderna’s current Covid vaccine with a flu vaccine that’s also under development, according to a press release. Shares jumped by more than 5% after the announcement.
“Today we are announcing the first step in our novel respiratory vaccine program with the development of a single dose vaccine that combines a booster against COVID-19 and a booster against flu,” CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement Thursday. “We are making progress on enrolling patients in our rare disease programs, and we are fully enrolled in our personalized cancer vaccine trial. We believe this is just the beginning of a new age of information-based medicines.”
The announcement comes on the heels of Moderna’s highly successful launch of its mRNA-based two-dose Covid vaccine, which was authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration in December. More than 147 million of the Moderna shots have been administered in the U.S., according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Messenger RNA, or mRNA, technology has been under development for years, but Moderna’s and Pfizer’s vaccines are the first time mRNA has been cleared for use in humans. The mRNA-based Covid vaccine works by tricking the body to produce a harmless piece of the virus, triggering an immune response. It’s said to be easier to produce over traditional vaccines, which generally use a dead or weakened virus to produce an immune response.
Bancel previously said the company hoped to have a booster shot that would combine protection against both viruses.
“What we’re trying to do at Moderna actually is to get a flu vaccine in the clinic this year and then combine our flu vaccine to our Covid vaccine so you only have to get one boost at your local CVS store … every year that would protect you to the variant of concern against Covid and the seasonal flu strain,” Bancel said in April.
Moderna also announced Thursday it is developing a pediatric vaccine, called mRNA-1365, which would combine vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus and human metapneumovirus.
— CNBC’s Kevin Stankiewicz contributed reporting
