Valneva Soars as Covid Vaccine Candidate Shows Promise

By Dhirendra Tripathi

Investing.com – ADRs of Valneva (NASDAQ:VALN) climbed more than 31% in Monday’s premarket as the company said the phase-3 trials of a prospective vaccine against Covid-19 vaccine had shown positive results.

The trials pitted Valneva’s candidate against the AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) vaccine that is among the six most widely used in the world against Covid. Valneva claims the results showed its candidate has superior neutralizing antibody levels compared to the British firm’s vaccine.

The outcome may suggest that both vaccines used in the study prevented severe Covid-19 caused by the circulating variants including the predominant Delta, Valneva said.

Valneva said it is preparing for trials in children 5-12 and a booster trial to evaluate the vaccine, VLA2001’s, booster performance for people in need of it.

The company has commenced submission for initial approval with the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and is preparing to initiate the same with the European Medicines Agency.

The announcement comes only weeks after the U.K. cancelled a provisional order of 100 million doses of the drug alleging that the company had violated its contract. Valneva had denied the allegations at the time and outside observers had seen the move as motivated in part by friction between the U.K. and French government over mutual implementation of the Brexit agreement and a bilateral agreement on policing migrant flows across the English Channel.

The stock had lost more than half its value in reaction to the U.K.'s move, but has now around half of those losses.

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