Benzinga Pro's Stock To Watch For Mon., Mar. 30, 2020: Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)

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Today's Stock Idea: Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)

Potentially some of the better news we've heard on the coronavirus front over the last few weeks, J&J Monday morning announced it now has a lead vaccine candidate targeted. 

J&J unit, Janssen Pharma, began using its already-proven AdVac technology back in January to try to identify a lead candidate for the vaccine. After working with scientists at multiple academic institutions, the company said it now has that lead candidate, as well as two backups. 

The company, a long with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) will commit more than $1 billion to its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. With a portion of this investment, the company will rapidly scale its manufacturing capacity for the potential vaccine with the goal of supply more than 1 billion doses of the vaccine around the globe.

Under a greatly accelerated timeline, J&J said it plans to initiate Phase 1 human studies of the lead candidate by Sept. of 2020. This would slate clinical data on safety and efficacy for the end of 2020 with hopes the vaccine could be available for emergency use authorization to patients in early 2021. 

Shares of J&J were up about 4% Monday morning on the news. The stock has been down about 15% over the last two months. 

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Posted In: Pre-Market Outlook
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