Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) Stock prices have plummeted from all-time highs. However, the company is starting to move in the right direction again. Shares have risen 68% in the past six months as artificial intelligence (AI) partnerships and positive data from cancer trials have piqued investor interest. However, personally, I am still not convinced that these developments make MRNA stock a buy and that more data is needed before making a decision. For now, I'm remaining neutral.
Moderna and OpenAI Partnership
In April, Moderna and OpenAI said they were deepening their partnership and announced expanded access to ChatGPT Enterprise for Moderna employees. This collaboration will enable Moderna staff to develop customizable GPTs (Generation Pre-Training Transformers) designed for specific purposes, from data analysis to image creation.
After a successful trial period in which 750 custom GPTs were created and widespread employee adoption, Moderna now plans to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise to thousands of employees. According to OpenAI, one of the most important GPTs used by Moderna staff is Dose AI. GPT helps clinical trial teams understand the optimal doses to use by reviewing and analyzing clinical data.
“Dose ID GPT has the potential to increase the amount of work we can do as a team. We can comprehensively assess these extremely large amounts of data, while helping ensure security and privacy. , can be evaluated in a highly efficient, safe and accurate manner,” Mekrit Workne, director of clinical development at Moderna, said in a statement.
ChatGPT has great potential and can be useful for tasks ranging from improving cooking skills to drug discovery. Its range of applications is vast. However, ChatGPT does not thoroughly explain its calculations and does not provide sources, so there may be issues that need to be overcome. It is also true that the benefits may take some time to become apparent.
Moderna's hopes for cancer
For a while, I thought Moderna was uninvestable. The pandemic has given this mRNA-driven drug company a unique opportunity to generate revenue. However, the company's only marketable product is the COVID-19 vaccine Spikevax, and that remains the case. So it's natural for investors to be concerned about future returns. The company reported that his Spikevax sales for the fourth quarter of 2023 were $2.8 billion. This is a significant amount, but it has decreased significantly due to the pandemic.
Cancer vaccines are part of the company's extensive pipeline, and mRNA-4157 could be one of the most exciting parts of the portfolio. In the Phase II trial, patients received either the immunotherapy treatment pembrolizumab (accepted as standard treatment after surgery) or the combination of pembrolizumab and mRNA-4157.
This study provided two positive headline data points. First, we confirmed that the combination therapy had a favorable safety profile. Moderna reported that there was no significant increase in toxicity or side effects with the combination therapy compared to pembrolizumab monotherapy.
Second, recurrence-free survival data demonstrated that combination therapy was more effective than pembrolizumab monotherapy. Moderna noted that 78.6% of patients did not show cancer recurrence 18 months after treatment, compared to 62.2% of patients in the control group who received monotherapy.
mRNA-4157 is designed to treat patients with solid tumors of the head and neck. Stock prices hit a three-month high in April following the release of the preliminary figures.
Moderna patent dispute
Investors were excited about the trial's announcement, but some analysts pointed to potential problems. Moderna uses intellectual property developed by Genevant Sciences and Arbutus Biopharma (NASDAQ:ABUS). Both companies hold patents on lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). These are vehicles for gene delivery that accommodate both nucleic acids and proteins. In other words, mRNA vaccines are able to evade the body's immune system.
The technology enabled Spikevax's success and is central to other pipeline projects, but Genevant Sciences and Arbutus Biopharma allege that Moderna used LNP without properly compensating or licensing either company. are doing. This claim has been verified by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Additionally, Genevat licenses this technology to other companies and certifies that the patent is legally enforceable. A verdict against Moderna could result in billions of dollars in damages and further worsen the company's negative cash flow situation.
Is Moderna stock a buy, according to analysts?
Twilio stock is rated a Moderate Buy, based on ratings from 18 analysts over the past three months. There are currently 8 buy ratings, 7 hold ratings, and 3 sell ratings. MRNA's average price target is $130.29, with a high estimate of $214 and a low estimate of $75. The average price target has room for a downside of 1.3%.
Moderna Stock Conclusion
Moderna is developing a pipeline of highly exciting and potentially commercially attractive medicines and therapeutics using mRNA technology. There are great expectations for vaccines against solid tumors of the neck and head. However, these developments were overshadowed by claims by Genevant Sciences and Arbutus Biopharma that Moderna used his LNP technology without a license. Given Moderna's current situation, I think it's very far from catching up to the stock price. So I'm neutral on that.
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