Merck Stock Slides After Record-Breaking Rally on Cancer Vaccine Trial
Merck's stock is sliding 1.1% in pre-open trading after surging to a new 52-week high of $153.50 yesterday.
The company and partner Moderna announced that their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine, intismeran autogene, combined with Merck’s flagship immunotherapy Keytruda, met both primary and key secondary endpoints in the large Phase 3 INTerpath-001 trial involving over 1,100 high-risk melanoma patients.
The trial achieved its primary goal of recurrence-free survival and its secondary goal of distant metastasis-free survival, marking the first positive late-stage result for any mRNA-based cancer therapy, a milestone that sent MRK to its highest level in over a year.
Analyst sentiment is mixed: while Morgan Stanley upgraded MRK to Overweight from Equal Weight, Citi flagged lingering questions about the efficacy data. Insider activity has been characterized by net selling with no recorded buying, and one prominent valuation model flagged the stock as approximately 27% overvalued relative to its intrinsic value estimate at the prior close.