A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee will meet for the second time in a week to discuss whether the regulator should authorize Moderna Inc.'s COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The same committee, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, met Dec. 10 and voted 17-4-1 that the FDA should grant an emergency use authorization to BioNTech and Pfizer Inc.'s COVID-19 vaccine. (The vaccine was authorized the following day and is now starting to be administered to health care workers and long-term care residents.) The committee is scheduled to meet again on Dec. 17 to discuss the risks and benefits of Moderna's experimental coronavirus vaccine, which is also a mRNA vaccine, before they vote on whether the FDA should authorize the vaccine. The meeting will be webcast and is scheduled to be held from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET. Shares of Moderna, which was founded in 2010 and has never had a product approved or authorized by the FDA, have soared 695.4% so far this year. The S&P 500 is up 13.4% for the year.
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