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Moderna: Speed Of COVID-19 Vaccine Now Hinges On Enrolling The Right Patients

 
• By Sarah Karlin-Smith

Recruiting the right patient population for Phase III trials of COVID-19 vaccines will be a key factor in how fast any candidate can come to market. The challenge, which will likely mean enrolling patients who often are underrepresented in trials, is keeping Moderna's Chief Medical Officer up at night. The company also talked vaccine distribution, what it feels it owes the US government for its financial support, and pricing of its potential mRNA vaccine on a recent New York Academy of Sciences webinar.

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Moderna is proactively working to ensure it recruits a diverse patient base that will hit clinical outcomes for its Phase III vaccine trial • Source: Shutterstock

Fast enrollment of the right patient populations will be critical to quickly conducting Phase III trials of COVID-19 vaccines and this will likely mean taking concerted steps to reach out to populations that can be harder to recruit for clinical trials, drug industry leaders said on a recent New York Academy of Sciences webinar.

Moderna Inc.’s Chief Medical Officer Tal Zaks said concern around whether his company’s COVID-19 clinical trial can reach “the right population that should benefit the most,” is keeping him up at night

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