The Moderna stock drop on Thursday, October 22, reached as much as 25% after partial data on the Merck Moderna cancer vaccine leaked on an oncology website ahead of its official release. It was an odd Moderna stock plunge, since the Moderna cancer vaccine actually delivered good news, cutting the risk of melanoma recurrence or death by 42% when paired with Merck’s Keytruda. By the close, the Moderna stock price had settled at $202.63, down $43.18 or 17.57%.
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Moderna Stock Drop Follows Cancer Vaccine Data Leak Despite Positive Results
Right now, the Moderna stock drop looks like sky-high hopes running into real numbers. Shares had nearly quadrupled since August, when the two companies said the trial worked but held back the actual data. The Moderna stock plunge wiped out a big chunk of that run, and yet, at the time of writing, Moderna is still up about 587% year-to-date, with a 52-week range of $22.28 to $254.48.
What The Merck Moderna Cancer Vaccine Trial Showed
The Phase 3 trial, called INTerpath-001, enrolled 1,137 melanoma patients after surgery. The Moderna cancer vaccine, known as intismeran autogene, reads the unique mutations in each patient’s tumor and trains the immune system to go after them.
Paired with Keytruda, the Merck Moderna cancer vaccine cut the risk of recurrence or death by 42% and the risk of distant spread or death by 38%, compared with Keytruda alone. After two years, 82.2% of patients on the combo were still cancer-free, against 70% on Keytruda alone. The benefit also climbed to a 58% risk cut after the six-month vaccine regimen. On paper, these are strong numbers, which is why the Moderna stock drop caught so many people off guard.
Dr. Dean Y. Li, president of Merck Research Laboratories, said:
“INTerpath-001 is the first Phase 3 study to demonstrate a clinically meaningful improvement in RFS and DMFS over standard-of-care KEYTRUDA in patients with resected melanoma, setting a new benchmark in the adjuvant setting and representing one of the most significant advances in melanoma treatment since the advent of immunotherapy. These results, building on the body of evidence from the Phase 2b study, strengthen our confidence in the curative potential of intismeran autogene when given in combination with KEYTRUDA. Importantly, these data suggest that, by intervening earlier, this approach may offer a tangible opportunity to change the trajectory of a patient’s cancer.”
Why The Moderna Stock Price Fell Anyway
Most analysts say the Moderna stock drop came down to expectations, not the science. Several Wall Street analysts said ahead of the release that investors wanted a risk cut of 40% or more, and many had anchored on the earlier Phase 2b study, which showed a bigger effect, according to RBC Capital Markets. The 42% figure cleared the bar, but only just, so the Moderna stock price slid and Merck shares also lost about 1.8%. Moderna went from a $245.81 previous close to an intraday low of $180.80, and around 49.8 million shares changed hands, more than double the usual 20.2 million.
BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan Seigerman tied the Moderna stock plunge to inflated expectations, not to weak efficacy, and UBS analysts also called it a strong data set overall. RBC’s Trung Huynh was less upbeat, saying melanoma should have been the best case for the shot.
What Moderna And Merck Plan From Here
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said the companies are getting ready to file for US approval and expect the Moderna cancer vaccine to launch in 2027. The full data gets its formal debut on Saturday at the ESMO Congress in Madrid, and Merck and Moderna are also testing the combo in kidney, bladder and lung cancer. That timeline, though, did little to soften the Moderna stock drop on Thursday.
Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna, had this to say:
“From the beginning, we believed mRNA technology could make it possible to develop cancer treatments uniquely matched to each patient’s tumor. The INTerpath-001 results mark a defining moment for that vision and show what’s possible when we rethink how medicines are made. These results reinforce our conviction that mRNA has the potential to fundamentally change how we treat cancer.”
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For now, the Moderna stock drop says more about how high investors set the bar than about the shot itself. Anyone who bought near the top and rode out the Moderna stock drop will likely be watching two things: fresh data from other cancers and the company’s earnings report on November 6, when the Moderna stock price could swing again.