By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – CureVac (NASDAQ:CVAC) stock plunged 13% in Thursday’s premarket trading after the German drugmaker said final test data showed its experimental vaccine against COVID-19 was only 48% effective in preventing the disease.
The German biotech had already said two weeks ago that initial lab results suggested its COVID-19 vaccine, known as CVnCoV, was only 47% effective, adding that new variants of the virus had proved a headwind.
Most vaccines in the market, including those by Pfizer (NYSE:PFE)-BioNTech (NASDAQ:BNTX) and Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA), which like CureVac's are also based on mRNA technology, have an efficacy of over 85%.
Moderna stock hit a record high this week after tests showed its vaccine was also effective against the delta variant, first identified in India.
The CureVac study involved about 40,000 adult volunteers in Europe and Latin America. Efficacy was 77% in the age group below 60 years of age when considering only moderate to severe symptoms and excluding mild cases.
CureVac said it had sent the data to the European Union drugs regulator. Beyond CVnCoV, the company said it is developing second-generation COVID-19 vaccine candidates in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK).