These 6 Coronavirus Vaccine Candidates Are The Likeliest To Succeed, Says Morgan Stanley

With about eight coronavirus vaccine candidates in clinical trials and 110 more in clinical testing, the race to a commercial product is intensifying. Against this backdrop, an analyst at Morgan Stanley looked at the most promising programs. 

Millions of doses of the vaccine could be available by fall 2020, and over 1 billion in 2021, analyst Matthew Harrison said in a note. The analyst sees safety as the biggest hurdle for these expedited programs.

It should be noted that earlier Monday, Moderna Inc MRNA reported positive interim Phase 1 data for its coronavirus vaccine candidate mRNA-1273.

The Coronavirus Vaccine Frontrunners

Six candidates — four clinical pipeline candidates and two preclinical candidates — have a reasonable likelihood of success and can be manufactured at a notable scale, Harrison said.

The analyst projects three waves of commercially available vaccines. The candidates, sponsors and the timelines are as follows:

By The End Of 2020 

• Moderna
• Pfizer Inc. PFE/BioNTech SE – ADR BNTX
• AstraZeneca plc AZN/University of Oxford
• CanSino

First Half Of 2021

• Johnson & Johnson JNJ

Second Half Of 2021

• Sanofi SA SNY/GlaxoSmithKline plc GSK 

Table compiled using Morgan Stanley data. 

Judging Initial Coronavirus Efficacy Data

Although conceding that initial clinical data might be difficult to judge, Morgan Stanley said it would look ahead to the proportion of patients that achieve neutralizing antibody levels.

Since these have not been established, the firm said it will compare against animal models as well as antibody titers achieved in cohorts of patients who have recovered from COVID-19.

Morgan Stanley said it believes the NIAID is working on neutralizing titer thresholds that could potentially confer protection, adding that the thresholds could become available prior to the release of initial vaccine data.  

Coronavirus Vaccine Market Opportunity

Morgan Stanley believes the pandemic market could be worth $10 billion to $30 billion, with the endemic opportunity at $2 billion to $25 billion.

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