Moderna Logo (PRNewsFoto/Moderna Therapeutics)
Buried in a preliminary report on Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is a list of financial backers that includes the famed singer Dolly Parton.
Parton was unaware that her $1 million donation to COVID research at Vanderbilt University in April would be used to advance the vaccine candidate from Moderna (NSDQ: MRNA), according to CNN.
The singer donated the money in honor of Dr. Naji Abumrad, a Vanderbilt professor of surgery. Parton met the physician when seeking medical advice in 2013 after she was injured in a car accident.
“I’m just happy that anything I do can help someone else,” Parton said on the Today Show. “When I donated the money to the COVID fund, I just wanted it to do good, and evidently it is.”
Moderna’s vaccine promises to be almost 95% effective, based on a recently announced interim analysis.
The vaccine ultimately received almost $1 billion in federal funding, according to the Washington Post.
Filed Under: clinical trials, Drug Discovery
