Moderna Logo (PRNewsFoto/Moderna Therapeutics)
Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) has joined Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) in announcing that its vaccine was 100% effective in a Phase 2/3 study involving adolescents. It will seek regulatory authorization to expand the use of its vaccine to adolescents as young as 12 in early June.
In the TeenCOVE study, no participants who received two doses of the mRNA-1273 vaccine contracted symptomatic COVID-19.
The positive news likely means that the vaccine will be authorized before adolescents return to school in the fall. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is already available for adolescents 12 and older.
Using a secondary CDC case definition of COVID-19 that includes milder illness, the Moderna trial found that the vaccine was 93% effective in seronegative participants. The secondary case definition requires the presence of one COVID-19 symptom and a positive reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test. The company used that definition because COVID-19 transmission in adolescents is lower than in adults.
Side effects in the trial were generally mild or moderate for vaccine recipients and similar to those in adults.
The TeenCOVID study enrolled more than 3,700 participants between the ages of 12 and 17.
“We are encouraged that mRNA-1273 was highly effective at preventing COVID-19 in adolescents. It is particularly exciting to see that the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine can prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection,” said Stéphane Bancel, Moderna CEO, in a statement.
Filed Under: clinical trials, Drug Discovery, Infectious Disease
