(AOF) – Moderna loses more than 5% in pre-market on Wall Street after announcing that its flu vaccine candidate, using messenger RNA technology, generated a strong immune response against the A strains of the disease but failed to demonstrate that it was at least as effective as an existing vaccine against the less common B strains.
“Today’s results represent an important step in the development of messenger RNA-based influenza vaccines to address influenza. We are encouraged by the safety and tolerability profile, as well as the strong immunogenicity results against strain A viruses that cause the overwhelming majority of influenza-related illness in the elderly.We now look forward to efficacy results from the pivotal Phase 3 efficacy study in course conducted in parallel,” said Stephen Hoge, president of Moderna.
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Loss of speed in European research
European research is losing ground to American and Chinese research. In twenty years, Europe’s share has fallen from 41% to 31% in global R&D. China’s share jumped from 1% to 8%. As for the United States, which supplanted Europe, in 2001 it devoted only 2 billion euros per year more than Europe to R&D, whereas now this gap has reached 25 billion! Some experts accuse the European authorities of not having deployed effective policies. The financing of pharmaceutical research should therefore have been better targeted via the “Horizon 2020” programme. France only comes in eighteenth position in European funding despite the quality of its research. Conversely, the United States concentrates funding on Boston and a few centers of excellence.