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Shares of Novavax Inc. jumped more than 20% in after-hours trading on Thursday, after the company revealed the results of studies that showed its proposed COVID-19 vaccine to be globally effective at nearly 90%, but much less effective against a new variant.
In a phase 3 trial in the UK, Novavax NVAX,
the vaccine showed an overall efficacy of 89.3%, but less protection against the new variants. Novavax has found that the original vaccine was 95.6% effective against the most common form of COVID-19 and 85.6% against the new strain originally identified in the UK.
A phase 2b trial in South Africa showed the vaccine to be just under 50% effective against a new variant originally identified in that country. After the 49.4% efficacy against the new variant led to a total count of 60% in this trial, Novavax said it would start developing a new vaccine specifically for this variant, which was discovered in United States for the first time on Thursday.
“One of the main advantages of our adjuvanted platform is that it uses a very small amount of antigen, which enables the rapid creation and large-scale production of combination vaccine candidates that could potentially treat multiple strains in circulation. of COVID-19, ”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 previous influenza studies, we are optimistic about our ability to adapt quickly to changing conditions. “
Originally, stocks plunged more than 10% in after-hours trading after the news broke, but quickly turned and rose more than 20%. The stock gained 2.2% in regular trading Thursday and gained over 1,700% last year as the S&P 500 SPX index,
increased by 14.5%.
Novavax is still conducting additional studies in the United States and Mexico. Executives planned to discuss the results further in a conference call at 4:30 p.m. EST Thursday.
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