Moderna and biotechnology news and updates

 This information is updated on Sept 23, 2021:

• NEWS FEATURE
• 14 September 2021

The tangled history of mRNA vaccines

Hundreds of scientists had worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the coronavirus pandemic brought a breakthrough.

Elie Dolgin

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Protecting Human Health through Biotechnology Breakthroughs and Platforms

Feature Story | May 25, 2021

Noubar Afeyan is founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, and cofounder and chairman of Moderna.

On November 15, 2020, after 4 months in large-scale Phase 3 clinical testing, Moderna received resounding proof that its new class of medicines based on messenger RNA encased in lipid nanoparticles could be safely deployed as a highly effective vaccine to combat the covid-19 pandemic. After nearly 10 years of development and testing, this biotechnology breakthrough became the core of a new life science platform with therapeutic applications for many diverse diseases.

For an industry generally characterized by low probabilities of success and long timelines, how did this approach succeed on its first try against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and in record time? What can be learned from this experience and how can it enable more effective, preemptive interventions to health threats?

For more than a quarter century, the vast majority of medicines used to treat or prevent disease came in one of two forms: small molecules or proteins. While DNA, short RNA, viruses, bacteria, and even human cells are all under active scientific and clinical development, their uses have been limited by various technical challenges to their safety, efficacy, or manufacturability. Alongside these alternatives, messenger RNA (mRNA) had also been considered for over 2 decades, but the adverse immune response caused by exogenous mRNA introduced into mammalian cells rendered those efforts unsuccessful.

Noubar Afeyan

By 2010 experiments in two academic labs (at the University of Pennsylvania[1] and Harvard University[2]) had shown that mRNA with certain chemical modifications could be translated more efficiently into an encoded protein with lower adverse immune response. These findings led my colleagues and me to initiate a project we named LS18 (the 18th such scientific platform undertaken by Flagship Pioneering and the precursor to what became Moderna). Our aim? To invent the necessary chemical modifications, in vivo delivery technologies, mRNA design and optimization software, and automated fabrication and large-scale manufacturing process needed to render mRNA into a class of new human medicines.

 

Moderna spent the past decade combining bioengineering, chemical engineering, and systems engineering advances to create its mRNA platform and a large development pipeline of 24 mRNA-based therapeutics and vaccines. Many engineering advances and inventions were enabling to our technology, including the computational design of mRNA constructs for in vivo expression, automated systems to produce thousands of different mRNAs, purification and analysis technologies for this new class of molecules, the process for GMP manufacturing of lipid nanoparticle–encased mRNA, and the overall systems needed to go from sequence to product efficiently.

 

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Comment to this post on linkedin: (June 4, 2021)

Shikai Chern, Ph.D out of network 3rd+ Technology Strategist, AI & Data Scientist, and Leader of Research/Innovation & Engineering/AI & Digital Transformation

2d

Moderna/Flagship Pioneering: visionary philosophy of science/technology/medicine, and innovative biomedical approach based on the convergence of life science/biotech & digital/computation technology: killer mRNA Platform that would create many breakthrough applications/products, and evolutionary information molecules (mRNA) opens a new era of medicine/health. Covid-19 mRNA Vaccine is the first realization of their dream: To invent the necessary chemical modifications, in vivo delivery technologies, mRNA design and optimization software, and automated fabrication and large-scale manufacturing process needed to render mRNA into a class of new human medicines.

 

Devi D. out of network 3rd+ Software Engineer at Unilever

29m (edited)

Lesson one and most important, without NIH/NIAID brain power to guide you through virus spike protein design and clinical trials etc, plus taxpayers $6 Bln, Moderna (you) could have never done it. Period!!! That is the most important lesson in the media everywhere. Rest you can say whatever pleases your heart.

 

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