Moderna

Moderna

Moderna is an American biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It focuses on drug discovery, drug development, and vaccine technologies based exclusively on messenger RNA. Moderna’s technology platform inserts synthetic nucleoside-modified mRNA into human cells. This mRNA then reprograms the cells to prompt immune responses.

About Moderna in brief

Summary ModernaModerna is an American biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It focuses on drug discovery, drug development, and vaccine technologies based exclusively on messenger RNA. Moderna’s technology platform inserts synthetic nucleoside-modified mRNA into human cells. This mRNA then reprograms the cells to prompt immune responses. As of November 2020, the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, had shown preliminary evidence of 94% efficacy in preventing CO VID-19 disease in a Phase III trial. This led to its submission for emergency use authorization in Europe, the United States, and Canada. In December 2018, Moderna became the largest biotech initial public offering in history, raising USD 621 million on NASDAQ.

The year-end 2019 SEC filings showed that Moderna had accumulated losses of USD 5billion since its inception, with a USD 514 million loss in 2019 alone, and had raised USD 3billion in equity since 2010. In March 2020, Moderna was valued at USD 60billion, though having the highest valuation of any U.S. private biotech company at more than USD 5 billion. In February 2016, an op-ed in Nature criticized Moderna for not publishing any peer-reviewed papers on its technology, unlike most other emerging and established biotech companies. In September 2018, Thrillist published article titled, \”Why This Secretive Tech Start-Up Could Be The Next Theranos\”, criticizing its reputation for secrecy and the absence of scientific validation.