By Sabela Ojea
Moderna secured a $590 million package from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department to accelerate the development of its pandemic influenza shots.
The financial package will provide additional support for late-stage development and licensure of pre-pandemic mRNA-based vaccines, the biotechnology company said Friday.
The agreement will also fund the expansion of clinical studies for up to five additional subtypes of pandemic influenza, Moderna added.
The financial support from the federal government comes right before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Monday, and at a time when Moderna is preparing to advance its mRNA-1018 investigational pandemic influenza vaccine into a Phase 3 trial.
In 2023, Moderna initiated a phase 1/2 study to generate safety and immunogenicity data of the shot in healthy adults ages 18 and older. The trial included vaccine candidates against two avian influenza viruses, H5 and H7.
Write to Sabela Ojea at sabela.ojea@wsj.com; @sabelaojeaguix
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 17, 2025 16:29 ET (21:29 GMT)
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