Which Is the Bigger Story for BioNTech -- Its Colorectal Cancer Vaccine Setback or the Lung Cancer Clinical Success?

It has been a volatile year for BioNTech (NASDAQ: BNTX), an mRNA-based vaccine specialist. The company's financial results have been unimpressive as its coronavirus business continues to struggle, but a major clinical trial win from Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), which also develops mRNA-based vaccines, helped jolt BioNTech's stock. The company's own clinical progress has been mixed, though. Let's look at one recent success -- and one failure -- the company has experienced to try to determine where the stock might be headed next.

Image source: Getty Images.

Let's start with BioNTech's recent announcement of Phase 2 clinical trial results for autogene cevumeran, an mRNA-based personalized cancer vaccine for certain patients with colorectal cancer. The biotech said it was ending the trial following the recommendation of an independent committee of external experts who reviewed the data and concluded that continued treatment was unlikely to change the efficacy outcome and identified a numerical imbalance in overall survival between the treatment groups.

Continue reading