VBI Vaccines Surges On Preclinical Coronavirus Update, Analyst Upgrade

Shares of VBI Vaccines Inc VBIV are moving strongly to the upside Thursday.

VBI Shortlists Vaccine Candidates: On Wednesday morning, VBI announced preclinical data from three mouse studies conducted to facilitate selection of optimized clinical candidates for its coronavirus program.

Based on the positive preclinical studies, the company selected two vaccine candidates, with the potential to be single-dose vaccines, to be advanced into a Phase 1/2 clinical study. The human study is expected to begin around year-end 2020.

The selected candidates are:

• VBI-2901 - a trivalent pan-coronavirus vaccine candidate expressing the SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV spike proteins
• VBI-2902 - a monovalent vaccine candidate expressing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein

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The VBI Upgrade: Following the data, Raymond James analyst Steven Seedhouse upgraded VBI from Outperform to a Strong Buy and increased the price target from $8 to $9.

"First look at data for VBI's COVID-19 vaccine, which simply looks like it could be the best vaccine of them all (including all of the first movers and Operation Warp Speed members)," the analyst wrote in a note.

At last check, VBI shares were advancing 37% to $4.41.