Merck Gives Up on Coronavirus Vaccines

Pharmaceutical giant Merck (NYSE: MRK) officially threw in the towel on its efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. The company said it's discontinuing the development of two candidates, V590 and V591, after a review of results from phase 1 studies indicated that they were unlikely to provide adequate protection against the coronavirus. It will instead focus its COVID-19 research and production capabilities on two therapeutic drugs for the disease.

Merck had hinted at a conference last month that the efficacy rates of Moderna's mRNA vaccine and the one developed by collaboration partners Pfizer and BioNTech were better than it had expected, and set a high bar for its efforts. As it turned out, V590 and V591 produced immune responses that were inferior not only to those produced by other vaccines, but to those seen in patients who have recovered from COVID-19 infections.

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Source Fool.com