Speaker 1: It's Thursday, July two. I'm Oscar Emiras from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Maderna is currently the front runner and developing a coronavirus vaccine.
Speaker 1: They will be entering the third phase of clinical trials
Speaker 1: this month with about thirty thousand people participating. Well, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of hope writing on Maderna to come through.
Speaker 1: The company has no track record in developing an approved
Speaker 1: drug and is also using an unproven approach to making
Speaker 1: the vaccine. Still, the company is worth twenty four billion
Speaker 1: dollars because of his current work. Peter loftus reporter for
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, joins us for more on vaccine
Speaker 1: front runner Maderna. Thanks for joining us, Peter, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me on. We've got some good news surrounding vaccines
Speaker 1: for coronavirus lately. Researchers said that an experimental coronavirus vaccine
Speaker 1: from Fiser and their partner is showing promising signs of
Speaker 1: working in an early stage study. But we want to
Speaker 1: focus on an article that you wrote about the front
Speaker 1: runner right now, the COVID vaccine front runner Maderna, and
Speaker 1: they are entering their third stage of trials later this month.
Speaker 1: They're the ones that are the furthest along in this process,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of hope behind the vaccine that
Speaker 1: they're trying to develop. But some interesting things about this company,
Speaker 1: They actually have no track record when it comes to
Speaker 1: creating these types of vaccines right now. They haven't done
Speaker 1: it just yet. And um, you know, you wrote about
Speaker 1: their CEO and the culture of the business that they run. Peter,
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit more about it. This is
Speaker 1: a biotech company that was started about ten years ago
Speaker 1: and they're still in what you would call the development
Speaker 1: phase of the company in the sense that they do
Speaker 1: have multiple drugs and vaccines that they're working on, whether
Speaker 1: it's in the labs or even in clinical trials in
Speaker 1: patients to test them, but they've never actually received approval
Speaker 1: to sell one of these drugs. So going into this year,
Speaker 1: they were working and I think more than twenty different
Speaker 1: drugs and vaccines for various diseases, including cancer and infectious diseases,
Speaker 1: but there were still a good two to four years
Speaker 1: away from being in a position to have their first
Speaker 1: product on the market. So then what changed, obviously was
Speaker 1: the pandemic and they eventually got involved in developing a
Speaker 1: coronavirus vaccine, as you mentioned, and if it's successful, that
Speaker 1: holds the possibility of being their first product. And so
Speaker 1: it's an interesting situation because they are a relatively young
Speaker 1: company using an unproven drug development technology and they're sort
Speaker 1: of jockeying with these bigger, more established companies that do
Speaker 1: have more of a track record of vaccines and drugs
Speaker 1: in this global chase for a coronavirus vaccine. Sounding a
Speaker 1: little bit more about this experimental development technique that they're using,
Speaker 1: because the way they're doing it, they're using m RNA
Speaker 1: messenger RNA to develop their vaccine. The other two front
Speaker 1: runners for vaccines right now are one from Oxford and
Speaker 1: Astra Zeneca and Johnson and Johnson. They're expected to start
Speaker 1: some of their later trials later this year, I think
Speaker 1: August in September. But they're doing it kind of the
Speaker 1: classic way where you get like a little piece of
Speaker 1: the virus or a dead part of the virus, and
Speaker 1: then you know it kind of makes the immune system
Speaker 1: respond to that. So the moderna vaccine works in a
Speaker 1: slightly different way. How does theirs work? I just need
Speaker 1: to clarify that the way that the vaccines from Oxford
Speaker 1: and Astra Zeneca, as well as Johnson and Johnson, they're
Speaker 1: actually not the old traditional way of making vaccines. They
Speaker 1: do use virus material, but what they actually do is
Speaker 1: take a common cold virus and they weaken it so
Speaker 1: that it's not really going to infect anybody, but it
Speaker 1: serves as sort of a carrier to get some of
Speaker 1: the DNA from the coronavirus into the human body, into
Speaker 1: human cells, and that sort of sets off a cascade
Speaker 1: of events that is supposed to provide immunity. That's actually
Speaker 1: a relatively new technology and there haven't been a ton
Speaker 1: of vaccines based on that, so I just want to
Speaker 1: make that clear. But it is different from what Maderna
Speaker 1: is up to, and what Maderna is up to is
Speaker 1: basically using a genetic code as the basis for its vaccine,
Speaker 1: and so in their case, they're using what they call
Speaker 1: messenger RNA or m RNA that is part of the
Speaker 1: genetic code from a protein that's found on the surface
Speaker 1: of the coronavirus, and what they do is they inject
Speaker 1: that into people and once that gets into the human body,
Speaker 1: it instructs human cells to basically make that protein or
Speaker 1: make a close copy of that protein, and then that
Speaker 1: then triggers an immune response, so that sort of makes
Speaker 1: the immune system think that the coronavirus is present, and
Speaker 1: then the immune system builds up defenses that theoretically would
Speaker 1: then prepare a person for when they're actually exposed to
Speaker 1: the virus in the future, although that part still has
Speaker 1: yet to be proven. So there's two different styles and
Speaker 1: madernas they use the RNA based approach, and this type
Speaker 1: of technology really has not been seen in any approved
Speaker 1: or licensed drug or vaccine to date, but they say
Speaker 1: that there is a potential advantage to doing it with
Speaker 1: this approach because they can design and manufacture these vaccines
Speaker 1: much more quickly than other ways. They're going to be
Speaker 1: entering their third stage of testing with I think like
Speaker 1: thirty thousand people. And this is the real deal right here.
Speaker 1: This is where a lot of vaccines end up failing
Speaker 1: in the process. So there's a lot of hopes behind
Speaker 1: what this next stage of the trials is going to
Speaker 1: go through. The news that people may have heard to date,
Speaker 1: including today, about the Fiser vaccine has been from early
Speaker 1: relatively small clinical trials with you know, relatively small number
Speaker 1: of people where they're basically just assessing safety and whether
Speaker 1: the vaccine triggers an immune response as measured by taking
Speaker 1: blood samples, and they need to do that just to
Speaker 1: sort of set of baseline expectation that this is not
Speaker 1: going to be harmful if they rolled out to a
Speaker 1: broad number of people. So now, yes, these bigger trials
Speaker 1: that are going to start getting underway in the next
Speaker 1: couple of weeks are gonna more definitively show not only safety,
Speaker 1: not only immune response, but also whether the vaccine actually
Speaker 1: protects a person from either getting infected or from developing
Speaker 1: a severe form of COVID nineteen. So those are being
Speaker 1: awaited as sort of the most definitive proof to date
Speaker 1: about which ones are going to work and which ones
Speaker 1: aren't going to work. All of the work right now
Speaker 1: being done on vaccines with regards to coronavirus has been
Speaker 1: moving at lightning speed compared to the past and how
Speaker 1: things have been done before. Let's say the trials, well,
Speaker 1: let's say we are getting good immune responses. Let's say
Speaker 1: there's not many side effects and it's actually working. How
Speaker 1: quickly would we be able to get that out to
Speaker 1: the masses, because I think I read in the article
Speaker 1: that you know, the CEO is confident that if it works,
Speaker 1: maybe in the fall they could have some emergency uses
Speaker 1: of the vaccine for frontline healthcare workers and things like that.
Speaker 1: But to manufacture it and to get it out to
Speaker 1: the public and mass, how long would that take. That
Speaker 1: aspect of the lightning speed is that a lot of companies,
Speaker 1: and with the help of governments and other organizations, they
Speaker 1: basically started to manufacture doses of their various vaccines before
Speaker 1: they've proven whether they work or not, And so that's
Speaker 1: different from normal vaccine development normally, it's it's more of
Speaker 1: a serial step. So I think that it's a very
Speaker 1: optimistic and hopeful view that some of these companies have
Speaker 1: that there could be preliminary results and data from these
Speaker 1: big clinical trials within a few months that might show
Speaker 1: whether they work. So therefore, the US government, using its
Speaker 1: public health emergency powers, could say, we think we have
Speaker 1: enough data to allow one or more of the vaccines
Speaker 1: to be used, but maybe at first on a limited basis,
Speaker 1: like let's give it to healthcare workers first. So that's possibility.
Speaker 1: I think there are people who are skeptical of that
Speaker 1: and feel like it's going to take longer than that
Speaker 1: to really get a clear answer about whether these vaccines
Speaker 1: are safe and effective and yes, and then the manufacturing
Speaker 1: also is an issue in the sense that, well, there
Speaker 1: might be some initial doses that could start to be
Speaker 1: given to healthcare workers, it still probably will take much
Speaker 1: longer to really scale up production and have enough to
Speaker 1: just vaccinate the whole country or vaccinate a good percentage
Speaker 1: of the globe. Well, I mean, it's going to be
Speaker 1: a huge summer for vaccine development as this trial is
Speaker 1: going to go through and others are going to start.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about Maderna, the company, because
Speaker 1: now they're worth about twenty four billion dollars their CEO
Speaker 1: as a billionaire as well. The country and the world's hope,
Speaker 1: so are kind of pinned on them right now to
Speaker 1: be the first one to finish developing the vaccine so
Speaker 1: that we can hopefully get back to normal again. So
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about the company and the
Speaker 1: culture there. The CEO is Stefan Boncel, and he has
Speaker 1: been leading the company pretty much from the start, I
Speaker 1: think since and for many years it's sort of labored
Speaker 1: in obscurity in the sense that it was not a
Speaker 1: household name, since it didn't have any products on the market,
Speaker 1: it was really only familiar to people in biotech circles
Speaker 1: or people who invested in biotech. And so it's mission
Speaker 1: has been to take this concept of using m r
Speaker 1: n A to develop treatments and vaccines for a number
Speaker 1: of diseases. And so it's sort of grown steadily at
Speaker 1: first through private investments and then eventually at the end
Speaker 1: of it had an I p O and raised a
Speaker 1: fair amount of money, so it's more in the public eye.
Speaker 1: But for the first year or so, really through the
Speaker 1: end of last year, the stock was kind of in
Speaker 1: a limited range and not really doing anything outstanding. And yes,
Speaker 1: it's really it's been this year and mostly because of
Speaker 1: its work on the coronavirus vaccine that it's just generated
Speaker 1: a lot more interest and with that a big increase
Speaker 1: in stock price and value. What we talked about in
Speaker 1: our article, what we reported was a company culture that
Speaker 1: was not only focused on really trying to develop this
Speaker 1: new way of making drugs and vaccine, but also a
Speaker 1: real hard charging culture, very high expectations, very demanding, requiring
Speaker 1: a lot of hours from workers, and what you could
Speaker 1: call sharper blunt critiques of workers if they weren't meeting
Speaker 1: management's expectations. So this has motivated some employees to do better,
Speaker 1: but others don't see that as their cup of tea
Speaker 1: and have left. And so for a number of reasons,
Speaker 1: including that culture, I think it's been a subject of
Speaker 1: debate that the company has in the eyes of people
Speaker 1: who work in the industry as well as invest three.
Speaker 1: As I said, there's a lot of hopes behind this
Speaker 1: company and behind the potential vaccine that they're developing right now.
Speaker 1: So we'll have to see how it goes over the summer.
Speaker 1: Peter LOFTUS reporter for The Wall Street Journal, thank you
Speaker 1: very much for joining us my pleasure. I'm Loscar Ramirez
Speaker 1: and this is reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big
Speaker 1: news stories. You can check me out on the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us on
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