The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the Trump administration has selected five finalists among the companies developing COVID-19 vaccine candidates.
government to help the companies with the most promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates.
The biotech's COVID-19 vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, is already in a phase 2 clinical study.
Moderna reported encouraging initial results from its phase 1 study of the vaccine last month.
Like Moderna, the AstraZeneca-Oxford team is currently evaluating COVID-19 vaccine candidate AZD1222 in a phase 2 clinical study.
The vaccine is in phase 1 clinical trials in the U.S.
Two companies that haven't advanced COVID-19 vaccine candidates to clinical testing yet were also included in the White House favorites. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) selected a candidate in March and plans to begin early stage clinical testing in September.
Novavax began its phase 1/2 clinical trial of COVID-19 vaccine candidate NVX‑CoV2373 late last month.
It seems likely that Novavax will advance NVX-CoV2373 into phase 2 testing before J&J and Merck crank up phase 1 clinical trials of their respective COVID-19 vaccine candidates.
And unlike Moderna, Novavax has already reported successful phase 3 results for another vaccine based on its nanoparticle technology -- flu vaccine NanoFlu.
It's likely that we'll never know for sure why Novavax didn't make the Trump administration's list of finalists and Merck, a late-comer to the COVID-19 vaccine scene, did.