You might think a biotech company that created a new vaccine, using novel tech like mRNA-based therapeutics, in record time to help the world fight a historic pandemic like COVID-19 would still be flying high. That hasn’t been the case so far for Moderna, whose only FDA-approved product to date remains its COVID vaccine Spikevax and its various forms for teens and children. But a new analyst report from Oppenheimer released this week asserts the company’s pipeline of mRNA-based vaccine candidates, for infectious diseases ranging from RSV to influenza, all the way to a type of cancer vaccine, is underrated, and could yield five new marketed products by 2026. The stock ended the first week of January up nearly 12% on the news.
The Oppenheimer report points to a number of the company’s experimental products that are in later-stage development, including:
- An influenza vaccine that might prove more effective than standard quadrivalent seasonal flu vaccines
- A combination flu and COVID vaccine that would, if proven effective, make it easier to address two bugs that tend to spike right around the same time every year
- An RSV vaccine candidate
- An experimental cancer vaccine for melanoma
Moderna’s Spikevax, like Pfizer’s similar COVID vaccine, is based on mRNA drug technology. Unlike traditional vaccines, ones based on mRNA tech use messenger RNA, which provide the body instructions to code for and create certain types of proteins, essentially turn your own cells into mini drug-making factories that produce an immune response against the specific biological adversary you’re fighting.
Conventional vaccines typically use weakened or modified bits of actual viruses to induce that same immune response so that your body can prepare an antibody army once you come face to face with the real pathogenic deal.
The ostensible advantage of mRNA tech is that it’s adaptable; if you have the genomic breakdown of the biological target you’re trying to fight or immunize yourself against, you can rapidly make new versions of a vaccine. That’s how Moderna and Pfizer have been able to adjust to evolving COVID variants with new booster shots suited to versions of coronavirus.
But the technology’s novelty and adaptability have also made it a prime target for political fearmongering rebuked thoroughly by the scientific community. For instance, Florida surgeon general Joseph A. Lapado this week called for a total halt on the use of mRNA vaccines, citing baseless and debunked claims about their risk for contaminating people’s DNA, during a season when a trifecta of respiratory illness-causing viruses (COVID-19 subvariant JN.1, influenza type A, and RSV) have left millions of Americans sick or hospitalized. New CDC data published on January 5 projects that COVID-related hospitalizations alone spiked by more than 20% in the week ending December 30 compared to the previous week, with just under 35,000 new COVID-related hospital admissions in the final week of 2023.
From a business perspective, the demand for COVID shots has plummeted, leaving both Moderna and Pfizer in a COVID vaccine sales rut which has forced both companies to shift strategies and focus on other diseases. Moderna faces singular challenges as a biotech whose entire strategy is based on mRNA technology that, to date, has only produced one winning product. This is the precise tension between science and the stock market when it comes to a technology like mRNA-based therapeutics, for science “doesn’t move in a straight line,” as Moderna CEO Stéphan Bancel told Fast Company’s Adam Bluestein last year. Many in the biotech investment crowd dismissed the notion that mRNA would ever produce any successful product–right up until it helped save the world from a pandemic.
The Oppenheimer report takes a bullish view on the opportunities of Modern’s underlying technology and the company’s leadership position in the space. Moderna’s in-development personalized cancer vaccine, in particular, could be a key therapy for the company’s future.
That vaccine for a form of the blood cancer melanoma is being tested in combination with pharma giant Merck’s best-selling cancer immunotherapy Keytruda. The companies announced in summer 2023 that they had begun enrolling patients in a wide-scale, global phase 3 trial testing the combination of Keytruda with Moderna’s experimental cancer vaccine mRNA-4157.
And according to the Oppenheimer analyst report, that combination, which is also being tested in other types of cancer, might be submitted for FDA approval by 2024 or 2025.
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