USA —Moderna, a pioneer in messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, is looking beyond the success of its initial COVID-19 vaccine and planning for future growth.
According to CEO Stephane Bancel, the company has established seven priorities for 2023 as part of its plan to build a better version of Moderna.
One of these priorities is to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance its drug discovery capabilities.
The company plans to use AI to speed up the identification of new drug candidates and improve the efficiency of its clinical trials.
Another key priority for Moderna is to conduct a ‘bold campaign’ of cancer vaccine studies. The company aims to leverage its mRNA technology to develop vaccines that can stimulate the immune system to fight cancer cells.
Moreover, the company is expanding its manufacturing capabilities with plans to open a new facility in Canada and the UK that will produce mRNA vaccines and therapeutics.
Moderna has been expanding its focus beyond the development of COVID-19 vaccines. In the past decade, the company has created seven different modalities, each with its own development candidates.
These modalities include infectious disease vaccines, cancer vaccines, intratumoral immuno-oncology, localized regenerative therapeutics, systemic secreted and cell surface therapeutics, systemic intracellular therapeutics, and inhaled pulmonary therapeutics.
As part of its expansion plans, Moderna is currently developing five vaccines against latent viruses, each of which represents a multi-billion-dollar market opportunity.
In addition, the company has also announced its plans to develop and begin testing vaccines targeting 15 of the world’s most worrisome pathogens by 2025.
These include Chikungunya, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Dengue, Ebola, Malaria, Marburg, Lassa fever, MERS, and COVID-19.
The US-based biotechnology company is already collaborating with partners on vaccines against some of these pathogens, such as the Nipah virus vaccine with the US National Institutes of Health and an HIV vaccine with the Gates Foundation and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.
Moderna has also made a commitment to permanently waive its COVID-19 vaccine patents for shots intended for certain low- and middle-income countries.
Furthermore, the company has made its messenger RNA (mRNA) technology available to researchers working on new vaccines for emerging and neglected diseases through a program called mRNA Access.
In addition to its commitment to global vaccine access, Moderna has announced plans to establish its first manufacturing facility in Africa, located in Kenya.
The facility will be dedicated to the production of mRNA vaccines, including those for COVID-19.
Moderna is also collaborating with Vertex Pharmaceuticals on an mRNA-based treatment for cystic fibrosis (CF), which has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its Investigational New Drug application.
Moderna is also developing vaccines against latent viruses, including cytomegalovirus (CMV), a common infection that is the leading cause of birth defects in the U.S.
The Phase 3 CMVictory trial with mRNA-1647 is approximately 40% enrolled, with enrollment now open in Japan. CMV represents a US$2-5 billion opportunity with no approved vaccine on the market.
Another project is mRNA-4157/V940, a personalized cancer vaccine developed by Moderna in collaboration with Merck.
This vaccine demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful reduction in the risk of disease recurrence or death compared to KEYTRUDA monotherapy in stage III/IV melanoma patients with high risk of recurrence following complete resection.
Moderna is also working on rare disease therapeutics, such as propionic acidemia (PA), a Phase 1/2 study of multiple ascending dose Paramount study of the candidate mRNA-3927 is ongoing.
In addition, Moderna has begun dosing patients in a Phase 1B trial of mRNA-0184, a heart failure treatment candidate that encodes for relaxin, a naturally occurring hormone that is known to cause hemodynamic changes that are potentially beneficial for heart failure patients.
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