Moderna Inc. ^Company

Moderna is pioneering a new class of medicines made of messenger RNA. They are developing a vaccine for COVID-19. The first patient in the Phase 1 trial received a dose of the vaccine candidate on March 16. The study is expected to enroll 45 healthy adult patients, between the ages of 18 and 55 years old, in an open-label Phase I clinical trial to test mRNA-1273 as a vaccine for COVID-19. It’s expected to conclude June 1, 2021. Participants will be followed for one year. The trial will be conducted at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. CEPI funded the manufacturing of the investigational vaccine for the first phase of the trial, which is evaluating different doses for safety and immune response. “It’s pretty important that we do this in a placebo-controlled scientifically sound design so that once those trials read out, we actually conclusively know and can demonstrate both the efficacy and overall safety profile of this vaccine,” Moderna chief medical officer Tal Zaks said during a March 30 call with investors, according to a FactSet transcript.