in just a few moments, we will be joined by the chairman of that company but first, let's go to meg terrell for more on this very intriguing story hi, meg. >> hi, tyler well, let's just walk through some of the events of just the last week. it was on friday when during a press conference in the rose garden at the white house, when the president was introducing operation war speed, focused on a vaccine, that he introduced moncef sloughy who happened to be a member of the board he made some comments saying he had seem some very early clinical trial data on a potential vaccine and he didn't say which one, that made him even more confident that the goal of having a vaccine by the end of the year was possible lots of speculation, of course, began that he was talking about moderna's vaccine. and monday morning at 7:30, moderna reported interim phase i date from its trial. and that data very early drove the stock up after the close of market, moderna announced it was selling $1.25 billion wort of stock and said it planned to primarily use those funds to fund the manufacture and distribution of the

let's bring in the dean of the stanford school of medicine and meg terrell. doctor, nice have you and, meg, nice to have you again. meg, i'll turn to you on the moderna question in a moment. doctor, what are you seeing in terms of the covid caseload, the number of icu admissions are the numbers trending in a positive direction >> well, thank you, tyler. it's good to be with you. yes, the numbers are trending in a positive direction. you know, the bay area went to shelter in place early. as a result, we never experienced the massive surge in patients that so tragically affected the new york area and other areas around the world. we continue to diagnosis new cases of covid-19 in the bay area. and continue to provide care through our health care delivery system for those patients. but, it's a much lower number of patients and, by and large, fewer severely ill patients than we're seeing in many parts of the country. but, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't, because we have to remain vigilant and we have to continue to observe the shelter in place and other guideli

the fda approved the company's coronavirus vaccine candidate for a phase ii trial let's bring in meg terrell for the very latest. meg? >> hi, john. this is moving at historic speeds moderna says it's got the go ahead to start that mid-stage study of their potential covid-19 vaccine, and at the same time, they are finalizing the protocol for the phase iii trial, which they now expect could begin in early summer 2020 and if all of this goes well, they say they could have potential regulatory approval as early as next year what this phase ii trial is going to do is to enroll up to 600 people in two different age groups half will be ages 18 to 55 and half will be over 55 and participants will be followed for 12 months but we're not going to be waiting those 12 months for the results and for moderna potentially to be moving forward in clinical trials this timeline, you can see going back to january when they first sequenced the vaccine and they had the vaccine sequence finalized, just until now, it's been only a few months these are some of the fastest timelines we've ever seen in history. but th

meg terrell is here with more. meg? >> when it comes to vaccines, the safety bar is even higher. because, remember, these are medicines being given to healthy people to try to protect them against disease. and of course, in a pandemic, the scale on which the number of people are going to get these things is massive. the main safety issue that experts are talking about is one known as immune enhancement. and right now experts tell us this is really a theoretical issue. it has not been observed in any of the vaccine candidates as of yet. what it means is that the vaccine could potentially make the disease more severe. and this is a phenomenon observed with the dengue virus, that if someone has encountered it once before, the next time they encounter it, it might be worse. it was also seen in rsv vaccine development and it set that field back for 30 years. we talked to dr. stoffels from johnson & johnson about how we can stop it. >> it is a ds enhancing problem, which a vaccine could have when it is not correctly developed. >> so it's obviously very scary and the way to avoid that,

meg terrell, it is now up 20% in the after-hours session. guy adami. on in other parts of the drug industry and it speaks to what we have been talking about for a while and big-cap pharma and the biotech stocks yesterday we talked about the ibb making this new high and you go back and meg was just talking about, go back and take a look at what happened to juneau all in the same space. the biotech names regardless of what you think about they're profiting, their prices, their stocks make a lot of sense i think more so now in this environment and that's something we've been saying now for months. >> tim, quick. >> and balance sheets in biotech especially the top of the weightings of the sector are very strong and -- right look at the outperformance anyone attaching the car-t whether it was gilead with the acquisitions and that's the space to be in and certainly where you're getting the multiple allogene up 21%. the one sentence in the major mall merger that could put the whole thing on the rocks we'll tell you what it is. plus why one analyst thinks the

meg terrell. >> brian kelly, you said if there were a vaccine, you would fade ivb >> yeah. >> what do you say at this moment >>. >> i still stick with that we're talking about eight people it's a vaccine, we've never had a coronavirus vaccine before this is something new. there seems to be so much hype built into this, and the fact that the company is selling shares right thing for the company to do but as an investor, i probably don't want to be a buyer of those shares >> guy adami >> if the vaccine is successful that's why they issued this secondary to pay for the production that's great they say that, i think brian's spot on. they're taking advantage of this to the upside. if the vaccine were to be successful, the stock would be higher, there would be a better time to do a secondary if they're within six hours of this stock going parabolic to me, at least, to the tune of $1.25 billion, that tells you all you need to know >> coming up, day trader is back on fast. he has a big update. first guy is winding up for a fast pitch why this group of cksos is ready to shine fast money is bac

meg terrell joins us as merck becomes the latest company to pivot its efforts to the virus response big, meg >> that's right, sara. a company with a more proven track record in vaccines is hard to find. merck announcing three deals in the covid-19 space one to develop an anti-viral drug, a small molecule or pill in phase one, the company saying it's shown to be well tolerated and they'll take it through clinical development, similar to remdesivir but in pill as opposed to iv. the company announcing two deals on two separate vaccines, so they're going to take both of them through clinical trials the first one is a deal with the nonprofit iavi to develop a similar vaccine to the technology they used for the ebola vaccine and it's actually the same team, mark feinberg, the feo of iavi was with merck when they developed the ebola vaccine, supposed to enter human trial sometime this year the company acquiring a company called themis, a privately held company for another potential for vaccine. i talked to ce, ken frazier by phone and he said they are looking for three things one that the tech

tests out there for covid-19, and more on the way, but reliability remains an issue let's get to meg terrellt on this front. hi, meg. >> hey, kelly. well, we keep hearing about new tests being proved to detect the virus that causes covid-19 all the time there are now three different kinds of tests on the market and experts do point out that the accuracy of the tests is not all the same so for the molecular pcr test, that's the most kmont test to detect current infection, some estimates put about 5 to 30% of those tests giving back false negatives, meaning you've actually got the disease, but the test says you don't. as for antibody tests to detect prior infection, the fda has set a threshold of no more than 10% false negatives, but some of the tests that are on the market before these new guidelines are even worse than that and finally, the newest test is an antigen test, which can return results very quickly, but for negative tests, you should not count on that as being correct, necessarily, the fda says now, some news has come out about the abbott i.d. now test an nyu study published yeste

meg terrell joins us with the details. er: good morning, andrew for the quarter, profit topped expectations the company also saying they see no material impact on their financial results as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. either in this quarter and they don't foresee one coming up for 2020 also some news on the covid-19 treatment front. takeda is one of the biggest makers of plasma therapies they say their plasma therapy for covid-19 is expected to start trials in summer with the first patient to be enrolled in july this is a similar approach to the convalescent plasma approach where somebody donates their plasma this is a turbo charge to that takeda is doing that in alliance with a number of other plasma companies around the world in a very unique kind of approach guys joe, back to you >> let's bring in the cfo of takeda pharmaceutical, christopher weber. thanks for joining us this morning. give us a best scenario timeline for some type of plasma treatment for covid-19 patients, in your view >> good morning, joe and goo

meg terrell joins us now with more hi, meg. >> reporter: those are all of the major questions he andall of these companies are racing to develop and test the safe and effective vaccine that's only half the battle. then they have to manufacture it on a scale that's nearly unprecedented for pretty much everybody on the globe experts say right now we don't have that manufacturing capacity but starting to get built. if you take a loat the typhoon partnerships j and j plans to partner with others to get up to a billion dose moderna partnering with lonza. oxford working with astrazeneca. pfizer working with biotech. a lot of these companies are depending on an industry that a lot of us don't know a lot about and contract development in organization that are playing an ever larger role in making our medicines. pwc estimates this was an industry about dall$99 billion n 2018 compromises names like emerging bio solution and lonza name not familiar to us now but will play a major role in making these vaccines, guys >> interesting, meg. >> go ahead. it was interesting >> stick around. we're goin

discuss big money being spent in the race for a vaccine are chris meekins from raymond james and meg terrell as always mike, let's start with you. >> yes s&p 500 pausing right below levels everybody is walking, 3,000 on the upside, right around the 200-day average look at a one-year chart of the s&p, we spent most of last summer in this relatively narrow defined range between 2,800 and a little over 3,000. so it is familiar territory. i don't think necessarily it means market stops in its tracks here often we kind of over shoot some of the widely watched levels once they get close by also, there's a lot of action below the surface. today is another day when you have some of the big cap winners backing off. banks also lower, but value and the average stock are outperforming. take a look at our one-month basis, the high data etfs, the most aggressive stocks in s&p, well outperforming the regular index as well as the low volatility version it shows a risk-seeking tone in the market, probably what you would want to see when the market is in rally by the way, it is fairly impressive the high beta

sara >> yes, let's go to our meg terrell, also following the testimony of dr.fauci on the hill or actually quarantined from looks like his house where he has a lot of books that he needs to organize, but probably doesn't have a lot of time to do it these days, meg what stood out to you? >> you know, talking about the really quick time lines they're working an highlighting moderna in particular and the 62 days that have passed since they envisioned this project together, but dr. fauci also brought up some of the concerns that could happen here, including with the safety around these things he brought up something called antibody dependent enhancement, or essentially what we've seen with a few vaccines in the past where the vaccines can actually make the infection worse when people encounter it, so the need to really be sure about the safety, even as they're moving at these incredibly fast time lines and then of course the need also to be able to prove efficacy, and it will be very interesting to watch how different companies and research groups approach that as

get an efficacy rate to be able to find it assuming a good outcome for approval >> stephane, it's meg terrell fever in a few of the patients can you tell me how many patients experienced fever in the city you observed so far i'm getting feedback from folks very closely focused on it and they seized on it that some folks might receive a fever from a reaction of the shot. >> you saw very few cases at the second dose, the highest dose, 250 microgram. if you recall when we started this program very quickly, 60 days from sequence of the virus, we didn't have time to do enough preclinical work we did preclinical work but not enough you have to really understand the vaccine. we put a very big range. 25 microgram, 100 and 250 just not to miss efficacy because we were running against this virus. the time was very precious from what we've seen today of the neutralizing antibody, 25 and 100 micrograms, at or above people recover from the virus, we don't need the 250 dose that is the second dose at the boost, the highest dose. this is typical from too much of an immune response lets you know how strong t