原文標題：
Moderna Warns New Waves of Covid-19 Are Coming
Moderna 警告新一波 Covid-19 即將到來
原文連結：
https://reurl.cc/zezERy
發布時間：
Updated May 28, 2021 9:03 am ET / Original May 28, 2021 8:17 am ET
原文內容：
Moderna scientists and executives laid out their plans to combat new strains
of the virus that causes Covid-19 at a virtual investor event on Thursday,
saying that new waves of the epidemic are on their way.
“As the virus spreads, it is rapidly mutating,” the company’s chief
scientific officer, Melissa Moore, said on the call. “Some of these new
viral strains appear to be even more transmissible than the original strain…
We already know that some of these new strains are less susceptible to
neutralization by our current vaccine.”
The company said that it tests new variants in the lab against its vaccines,
and is “constantly” making and testing new versions of its vaccine. But it
warned that the process is not instantaneous, and that the company’s agility
is limited by the complexity of the work.
“The shortest time from the detection of a variant of concern to preclinical
immunogenicity readout against a panel of pseudoviruses is approximately 2 to
3 months,” said Guillaume Stewat-Jones, a Moderna (ticker: MRNA) scientist
who works as associate director of antigen design and selection on their
infectious disease team. “And new viral variants are coming — emerging
constantly in real time.”
The company offered an overview of a range of its scientific programs in the
presentation, including discussions on the engineering of its messenger RNA
and the performance of the lipid nanoparticles that enclose the messenger RNA
particles.
Analyst questions at the end of the call, however, focused almost entirely on
its Covid-19 vaccines. That is another sign of the importance the vaccine to
the current valuation of Moderna (ticker: MRNA) shares, as SVB Leerink
analyst Mani Foroohar wrote in a note out Thursday.
In a separate note, Jefferies analyst Michael Yee wrote that the presentation
demonstrated Moderna’s leadership in messenger RNA-based therapeutics.
“[Management] is investing in engineering to ensure they have ‘
differentiated’ mRNA constructs… and this will be a key ‘moat’ to just
anyone being able to ‘do mRNA,’” Yee wrote.
Moderna shares climbed 2.3% on Thursday, and were down 0.4% on Friday.
Barron’s argued in a feature in late April that Moderna shares had room to
climb, and that Wall Street’s worries over its market value, which at that
time was $67 billion and is now $70.5 billion, were overblown.
Foroohar and Yee are more cautious. Foroohar has an Underperform rating on
Moderna, at a target price of $83, while Yee has a Hold rating and a target
price of $170. Moderna closed at $179.54 on Thursday, and is up 71.9% so far
this year, and more than 220% over the past 12 months.
機翻如下：
Moderna公司的科學家和高管們在週四的一次虛擬投資者活動中闡述了他們對抗導致
Covid-19的病毒新菌株的計畫，並表示新一波的疫情正在到來。
"該公司的首席科學官Melissa Moore在電話會議上說："隨著病毒的傳播，它正在迅速變
異。"其中一些新的病毒株似乎比原來的病毒株更具傳播性......我們已經知道，這些新
的病毒株中的一些不太容易被我們目前的疫苗中和。
該公司說，它在實驗室中針對其疫苗測試新的變種，並 "不斷" 製造和測試其疫苗的新版
本。但它警告說，這個過程不是即時的，而且公司的敏捷性受到工作複雜性的限制。
Moderna（股票代碼：MRNA）的科學家Guillaume Stewat-Jones說："從檢測到一個令人關
注的變體到針對一組假病毒的臨床前免疫原性讀出，最短的時間大約是2到3個月，"他在
傳染病團隊中擔任抗原設計和選擇副主任。"而且新的病毒變體正在出現