Health and Healthcare

Novavax Bulls Keep Charging as More COVID-19 Results Come Out

Chris Lange

Published: August 5, 2020 11:21 am

Novavax Inc. (NASDAQ: NVAX) shares hit another all-time high on Wednesday after the company announced positive results from its early stage COVID-19 vaccine study. Although some investors were concerned about the adverse effects, the bulls have effectively won this trade.

Specifically, the firm announced Phase 1 data from its Phase 1/2 trial of its COVID‑19 vaccine with and without Matrix‑M adjuvant in healthy adults 18 to 59 years of age. NVX‑CoV2373, the company’s recombinant COVID-19 vaccine candidate, adjuvanted with Matrix-M was generally well-tolerated and elicited robust antibody responses numerically superior to that seen in human convalescent sera.

The vaccine was well tolerated and reactogenicity events were generally mild. Following the first dose, tenderness and pain were the most frequent local symptoms and systemic events were individually less frequent, with headache, fatigue and myalgia being reported most commonly.

Unsolicited adverse events were collected through 28 days after the second dose. There were no severe unsolicited adverse events, and the vast majority of adverse events were mild and deemed not related to vaccination.

In the study, all subjects developed anti-spike IgG antibodies after a single dose of vaccine, many of them also developing wild-type virus neutralizing antibody responses. After the second dose, 100% of participants developed wild-type virus neutralizing antibody responses. Both anti-spike IgG and viral neutralization responses compared favorably to responses from patients with clinically significant COVID‑19 disease.

The long and short of it is that this Phase 1 data demonstrated that NVX-CoV2373 with the Matrix-M adjuvant is a well‑tolerated COVID-19 vaccine with a robust immunogenicity profile.

Novavax stock traded up about 10% at $172.50, in a 52-week range of $3.54 to $189.40. The consensus price target is $142.25.