Moderna & Merck stocks skyrocket on their cancer vaccine trial’s success. Here’s what to know
Yahoo Finance Video and Julie Hyman
Wed, August 19, 2026 at 8:13 PM GMT+5:30
- MRNA
+138.25% - MRK
+12.35%
Wall Street Horizon head of corporate event research Christine Short and Sherwood News markets editor Luke Kawa chat with Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman about Moderna’s (MRNA) and Merck’s (MRK) melanoma vaccine trial success
00:00Speaker A
Moderna and Merck that they had positive results in a late street, late stage trial of their combined, like sort of vaccine treatment for recurrence of melanoma. And this is really a big deal and it’s pretty exciting
00:07Speaker B
00:07Speaker A
I mean, people people who are more steeped in this world are excited. But anytime you hear something that that has the words vaccine and cancer in it
00:20Speaker B
Yeah.
00:20Speaker A
I think it’s good reason to be excited. So basically what it is is it’s Merck’s Keytruda combined with Moderna’s technology and people who had had melanoma who received this treatment had a much less um percentage of recurrence. And I know that folks out there in the medical community say they want even more data to support this. Um but Moderna shares and Merk shares are flying here on this because this is sort of the next stage of what we’re looking for out of these types of technologies
00:46Speaker B
Yeah.
00:47Speaker B
And it’s the first time I think the MRNA based technology cancer treatment has reached a final stage, right? of of testing. And so it’s the furthest we’ve gotten as you said, so it’s very exciting. Melanoma, I read the American Cancer Society says it’s the fourth most common cancer amongst men and fifth most common cancer amongst women. I think probably all of us here know someone that has had skin cancer. Um, and so this is very exciting and also, um, that’s just at a general human level, but for the stocks themselves, I mean, we know Moderna has been looking for kind of a second act with their MRNA technology. Since COVID, there’s really been, I think their their EPS has been negative since Q4 2024. It’s been like eight to 10 quarters of negative.
01:21Speaker A
Yeah. And the stock is down like 80% from its peak
01:23Speaker B
The stock has been crushed. And so, they’ve said they’re going to use it for these cancer therapies, but we have not yet seen any any
01:29Speaker A
Right
01:29Speaker B
proof. And so this is the first kind of very exciting news. And then as you said for even for Merck, Keytruda, their patent on that is coming to an end. I think end of 2028, so they’ve got two years left. They were also looking for their next big thing
01:46Speaker A
Yeah.
01:46Speaker B
And so this is a great uh, you know, news for both of those names
