Novavax Inc.’s shares jumped more than 20% on Thursday’s trading session after the company revealed results of studies that showed its proposed COVID-19 vaccine is almost 90% effective overall, but much less effective against a new one. variant.
In a Phase 3 test in the UK, Novavax NVAX,
vaccine showed 89.3% overall effectiveness, but less protection against new variants. Novavax reported that the original vaccine was 95.6% effective against the most common form of COVID-19 and 85.6% effective against the new strain originally identified in the UK
A Phase 2b trial in South Africa showed that the vaccine was slightly less than 50% effective against a new variant originally identified in that country. After the 49.4% effectiveness against the new variant led to an overall 60% figure on that test, Novavax said it would begin to develop a new vaccine specifically targeting this variant, which was found in the U.S. for the first time on Thursday -market.
“A major benefit of our adjuvant platform is that it uses a very small amount of antigen, allowing for rapid creation and large-scale production of combined candidate vaccines that could potentially target multiple circulating strains of COVID-19,” research president and development, Gregory Glenn, said in Thursday’s announcement. “Combined with the safety profile that has been observed in our studies to date with our COVID-19 vaccine, as well as with previous studies on influenza, we are optimistic about our ability to adapt quickly to changing conditions.”
The shares originally plunged more than 10% on the floor after the news was released, but soon recovered and rose more than 20%. The shares gained 2.2% on Thursday’s regular trading session, and more than 1,700% last year, according to the S&P 500 SPX index,
increased by 14.5%.
Novavax is still conducting additional studies in the United States and Mexico. The executives planned to discuss the results in more detail in a 4:30 pm conference call east of Thursday.