Moderna Vaccine
Emailed on March 20th 2020 in The Friday Forward
The first U.S. clinical trial for a novel coronavirus vaccine began this week, based on a formulation selected by Moderna Therapeutics and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Moderna was the first biotech unicorn, valued by venture capitalists at $3 billion in early 2015.
But what's especially interesting about Moderna, is that it wasn't just backed by venture capitalists, it was invented by them. Moderna was created inside an incubator program run by Cambridge, Mass.-based Flagship Pioneering. It didn't even have a name for the initial nine months of its life, just a project number.
Here's how Moderna works according to Dan Primack:
Moderna’s core technology is designed to help people make medicines within their own cells, rather than create something in a lab which patients need to ingest or inject (i.e., the way other biotech works). It does so by injecting messenger RNA into the body, and then that mRNA stimulates the person’s cells to create the needed therapeutic proteins. Patient, heal thyself. Equally important, Moderna claims that its mRNA design is able to evade the typical human immune response that has felled past mRNA efforts.
A bright spot, but still need time: Moderna hopes that the trials, which are being run by the NIH, could reach Phase 3 by the fall. If all endpoints are met, that could mean a vaccine by this time next year.
