Moderna made its name in infectious diseases and, ever since the pandemic, it has been desperate to find a new area of speciality. On Wednesday, it did: its mRNA-based melanoma vaccine, jointly developed with Merck, doesn’t just offer a potentially massive market itself, but may also lead to breakthroughs for other cancers, including lung, bladder and kidney.
The Massachusetts-based company will need a number of these to pan out to justify its new, more than doubled, market capitalisation of nearly $60bn.
Moderna needed the break: its revenue had fallen from almost $20bn in 2022, on the success of its Covid-19 vaccine, to $2bn last year. The second Trump administration and its health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, have been less hospitable to vaccines, especially those based on the novel mRNA technology. But cancer treatments are a big market, potentially highly lucrative and less likely to draw political and social controversy.