Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stenovik from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser
Speaker 1: and I'm Tim Stanovik, the cover story this week. At
Speaker 1: the beginning of the pandemic, a few of us had
Speaker 1: ever heard of Moderna. Now the company is a household
Speaker 1: name with a billion dollar market cap, and it's COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen vaccine may have nineteen billion dollars in sales this year.
Speaker 1: So what comes next? The company has or will soon
Speaker 1: have messenger RNA based vaccines and trials for no fewer
Speaker 1: than ten different viruses, including flu, HIV, and zika, And
Speaker 1: if that's not enough, it's also working on cancer, rare
Speaker 1: genetic diseases, and even heart disease. The company's CEO sees
Speaker 1: m RNA coming to dominate the market for viral vaccines
Speaker 1: and one day make the hard work of designing drugs
Speaker 1: and vaccines a bit easier, more like creating software. If
Speaker 1: he can pull it off, the medical implications would be huge,
Speaker 1: as with the financial payoff for the company, But it's
Speaker 1: not going to be easy for Maderna now that Messenger
Speaker 1: RNA vaccines have succeeded so spectacularly, every major vaccine company
Speaker 1: is trying to catch up, and as it expands beyond
Speaker 1: COVID Maderna will have to prove messenger RNA can work
Speaker 1: in large trials for difficult to treat diseases such as cancer.
Speaker 1: A year ago, Moderna was an unprofitable company with no
Speaker 1: marketed products and a promising but totally unproven technology. None
Speaker 1: of its experimental drugs and vaccines had ever completed a
Speaker 1: large scale trial. Experts were divided on how well the
Speaker 1: mRNA based COVID nineteen vaccine it was about to enter
Speaker 1: in a phase three trial with stack up against older,
Speaker 1: more established vaccine technologies. This year, Moderna could deliver one
Speaker 1: billion doses of its COVID shot and bring in nineteen
Speaker 1: billion dollars in revenue. It's become the rare biotech to
Speaker 1: hit the big time without being gobbled up by or
Speaker 1: splitting profits with larger, more established company. It's worth over
Speaker 1: ninety billion dollars more than stalwarts such as Bayer, the
Speaker 1: German inventor of aspirin, and biotech peers such as Biogen
Speaker 1: founded three decades prior. The speed at which Moderna and
Speaker 1: its primary mRNA competitor, a partnership between Fiser and bi
Speaker 1: on Tech, devised their shots, has made a major contribution
Speaker 1: to the fight to end the pandemic. With strong efficacy,
Speaker 1: steady supply, and no show stopping safety scares, officials are
Speaker 1: carefully monitoring rare heart inflammation cases in teenagers and young adults.
Speaker 1: mRNA shots have become the vaccines of choice, at least
Speaker 1: in countries that can get them. But for Moderna Chief
Speaker 1: executive officer Stefan Bonsel, the COVID vaccine is just the beginning.
Speaker 1: He's long promised that if mRNA works, it'll lead to
Speaker 1: a giant new industry capable of treating most everything from
Speaker 1: heart disease to cancer to rare genetic conditions. Moderna has
Speaker 1: drugs and trials for all three of these categories, and
Speaker 1: bon Cell says his company can also become a dominant
Speaker 1: vaccine maker, developing shots for emerging viruses such as NIPA
Speaker 1: and zica, as well as better known, hard to target
Speaker 1: pathogens such as HIV. In the past forty years, more
Speaker 1: than fifty new human viruses have been discovered, only three
Speaker 1: have authorized vaccines. Bonzell views that as an opportunity We're
Speaker 1: going to totally disrupt the vaccine market, he says, during
Speaker 1: a late May interview at modernist Cambridge, Massachusetts headquarters, which
Speaker 1: fills a ten story building north of the m I
Speaker 1: T campus. The Swiss drug maker Novartists occupies labs in
Speaker 1: an adjacent building, and Fighter and Merk have offices a
Speaker 1: few blocks away. Bonzell, who's forty eight, wears a pressed
Speaker 1: blue shirt, dark blue jeans, and a black air miss belt.
Speaker 1: An avid runner, he appears even trimmier in person than
Speaker 1: on his frequent virtual conference appearances. He repeatedly jumps to
Speaker 1: his feet during the interview to graph on a whiteboard
Speaker 1: how the COVID outbreak could evolve. One chart forecast seasonal
Speaker 1: waves declining each passing year, but still significant. Another projects
Speaker 1: the possible decay of vaccine efficacy over time, with m
Speaker 1: RNA shots like his starting in the best position but
Speaker 1: gradually declining. Countries may want to stockpile booster shots soon.
Speaker 1: My mother is seventy two and she has leukemia, he says,
Speaker 1: I don't want her to go through the fall without
Speaker 1: a boost. The company has vaccines for ten viruses that
Speaker 1: are in or about to be in human trials. These
Speaker 1: include three types of COVID nineteen boosters that are in
Speaker 1: mid stage trials, a seasonal flu shot that began its
Speaker 1: first human study in July, and HIV shots that are
Speaker 1: slated to begin studies later this year. The furthest along
Speaker 1: besides the covid shots, combat cit omegalovirus, a ubiquitous bug
Speaker 1: that spreads through bodily fluids and is a common cause
Speaker 1: of birth defects. It's set to begin a Phase three
Speaker 1: trial this year in women of childbearing age. In the
Speaker 1: long term, Moderna is aiming to develop an annual supershot
Speaker 1: that could suppress numerous respiratory ailments, including covid, the flu,
Speaker 1: and others. Our goal is to give you several m
Speaker 1: RNA's in a single shot at your local CVS or
Speaker 1: GP every August or September. Bond Sell says now comes
Speaker 1: the difficult part delivering on that promise while keeping ahead
Speaker 1: of just about every other vaccine company in the world
Speaker 1: as they rapidly invest in m RNA. In the future,
Speaker 1: MODERNA won't have the pandemic to highlight m r as
Speaker 1: most obvious advantages over older technologies, speed and flexibility. Future
Speaker 1: vaccines and drug will usually have to go through the
Speaker 1: US Food and Drug Administration's normal approval process, meaning longer
Speaker 1: follow ups to gather data and six to ten month
Speaker 1: review timelines. That time frame will provide space for mRNA
Speaker 1: wielding rivals and older technologies to compete. Fiser, with its
Speaker 1: partner by On Tech, has become an m RNA manufacturing
Speaker 1: juggernaut and expects to produce three billion doses this year.
Speaker 1: It has also dominated foreign distribution of m RNA vaccine
Speaker 1: so far. Another vaccine from Kervak in Germany, which took
Speaker 1: a different approach to m RNA, performed tepidly, proving only
Speaker 1: forty eight percent effective in phase three trial data released
Speaker 1: in June, but still another from China's While vax Biotechnology
Speaker 1: will soon begin phase three testing in seven countries, more
Speaker 1: established technologies are reasserting themselves too. On June fourteenth, Novovac
Speaker 1: said it's recombinant protein vaccine was effective in a nearly
Speaker 1: thirty thousand person trial in the US and Mexico with
Speaker 1: relatively few side effects, results that more or less matched
Speaker 1: those of the best mRNA shots vaccine. Giant Sinophi and
Speaker 1: Glaxow Smith Klein are in Phase three trials of their
Speaker 1: own protein based COVID vaccine, which could hit the market
Speaker 1: by year end. Many for Uhar, an analyst at s
Speaker 1: vp Lerinc, Calls Moderna's accomplishments with the COVID vaccine truly breathtaking,
Speaker 1: but he also says it's far from certain whether such
Speaker 1: vaccines will have clear efficacy advantages with other viral diseases,
Speaker 1: and how big a role of the technology could play
Speaker 1: in treating non infectious diseases such as cancer is unknown,
Speaker 1: So though public expectations are boundless, he says, the revenue
Speaker 1: opportunity is not the reply for Boncell and the others
Speaker 1: pouring money into tiny RNA strands lies in those two
Speaker 1: key advantages of speed and adaptability. At their heart, mRNA
Speaker 1: vaccines are modular technology. They deliver the genetic code telling
Speaker 1: cells how to make the virus proteins that provoke an
Speaker 1: immune response, and the cells do the hard work from there.
Speaker 1: Now that Moderna is profitable and sitting on almost eight
Speaker 1: billion dollars in cash, bon Sell's own stake including options,
Speaker 1: is worth around seven billion dollars according to the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Billionaires Index, it can move quickly and aggressively into numerous
Speaker 1: new applications simply by changing the genetic code it puts
Speaker 1: into the m RNA. While modernas shot appears to be
Speaker 1: holding up well against the currently surging delta variant, for example,
Speaker 1: it's a straightforward process for the company to incorporate mutations
Speaker 1: into the vaccine if needed. We don't have to introduce
Speaker 1: new technology or new processes. Bon Sell says. It's exactly
Speaker 1: the same thing when Bontell left the top job at
Speaker 1: the French diagnostics company Bio Murio and became the second
Speaker 1: employee at Moderna. The name is a mashup of modified
Speaker 1: and RNA. A decade ago, the idea that messenger RNA
Speaker 1: could be medically useful was radical at the time. The molecule,
Speaker 1: which evolved to carry protein blueprints from DNA in the
Speaker 1: cells nucleus to the compartments that synthesized proteins, had a
Speaker 1: reputation among lab scientists as fragile and hard to work with.
Speaker 1: When m RNA is artificially inserted in the human body,
Speaker 1: the immune system identifies it as a threat and a
Speaker 1: tax it, and because m RNA's function is temporary, enzymes
Speaker 1: found throughout the body can break it down. Neither a
Speaker 1: desirable outcomes for a drug or vaccine. Starting in two
Speaker 1: thousand five, two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Catalincaiko
Speaker 1: and Drew Wisseman managed to slightly modify mRNA so it
Speaker 1: generated less of an immune reaction and in the body.
Speaker 1: The finding drew little recognition at the time, but it
Speaker 1: turned out to be a critical advance. Catalan left Pen
Speaker 1: to join BioNTech in in a trio of Harvard at
Speaker 1: m I T scientists founded by venture firm Flagship Pioneering
Speaker 1: picked up on the idea and founded Moderna, bringing Boncell
Speaker 1: on the next year. Moderna and BioNTech later licensed the
Speaker 1: PEN technology. Boncell recalls telling his wife before he changed jobs,
Speaker 1: that there was a five percent chance the m RNA
Speaker 1: concept would succeed, but if it did, it would be huge.
Speaker 1: When Boncell pitched Moderna's now president, Stephen Hog on the
Speaker 1: company the following year, Hoax says his reaction was he's
Speaker 1: either brilliant or crazy. Hog was then a Mackenzie partner
Speaker 1: with a medical degree, and he was interested in doing
Speaker 1: something that would have more societal impact. He slowly came
Speaker 1: around to Boncell's view that mRNA therapy, if worked, was
Speaker 1: really going to transform medicine. The concept behind m RNA
Speaker 1: vaccines is simple. When the shots bring those protein making
Speaker 1: instructions to cells, they effectively turned them into microscopic vaccine
Speaker 1: factories in their own right. This allows developers to streamline
Speaker 1: what is normally a messy manufacturing process. Many flu vaccines,
Speaker 1: for example, are made inside chicken eggs, and even newer
Speaker 1: genetically engineered vaccines still require growing viral proteins inside vats
Speaker 1: of live sales. Bypassing such steps lets mRNA vaccine manufacturers
Speaker 1: shift gears fairly quickly. It also appears to be relatively
Speaker 1: easy for them to make complicated vaccines involving multiple viral proteins.
Speaker 1: Everything with m RNA is just simpler, says Barney Graham,
Speaker 1: Deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National
Speaker 1: Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases WHO LAB has been
Speaker 1: formally collaborating with Moderna since seventeen. For me, making vaccines
Speaker 1: that are as simple as possible is the way to go,
Speaker 1: Graham says. Gene based shots such as m RNA vaccines
Speaker 1: are particularly well suited to fighting viruses because they seem
Speaker 1: to be adept at producing the so called killer T
Speaker 1: cells that destroy virus infected cells. Before MODERNA could create
Speaker 1: an mRNA based product, it had to crack the problem
Speaker 1: of how to protect the molecule from the body's defense
Speaker 1: systems by modifying the RNA. The pen researchers had figured
Speaker 1: out how to dampen the hair trigger immune response it provoked,
Speaker 1: but their approach would be useless if it were broken
Speaker 1: down by enzymes before it could reach cells. The key
Speaker 1: to solving that problem turned out to be adding protective
Speaker 1: lipid nanoparticles to surround the mRNA molecules, essentially creating balls
Speaker 1: of fat with little bits of RNA mixed in there,
Speaker 1: says Carrie Bennatto, chemist who left asdra Zenica to join
Speaker 1: MODERNA in. When MODERNA started working on this approach in
Speaker 1: it had been tried mostly on much smaller types of
Speaker 1: RNA molecules, and there were concerns about side effects. People
Speaker 1: had decided they were toxic coaxes. Nanoparticles contained synthetic fats,
Speaker 1: and in early iterations, some of those fats tended to
Speaker 1: accumulate in cells, building up over time and potentially causing
Speaker 1: liver damage or other side effects. Beninato's assignment was to
Speaker 1: devise nanoparticles that could safely and efficiently carry out the
Speaker 1: m RNA into cells, release the playload, and then quickly
Speaker 1: break down. When she started, the chemistry involved in using
Speaker 1: nanoparticles with m RNA was so unexplored that there were
Speaker 1: few published scientific papers to guide her. She and her
Speaker 1: team made one tweek after another, pinpointing changes that improved
Speaker 1: lnerability without harming their ability to deliver mRNA. By Moderna
Speaker 1: had made a breakthrough finding a series of lipid molecules
Speaker 1: that fit the bill. Then it was off to the races.
Speaker 1: Ben and Otto recalls they patented the formulas and started
Speaker 1: deploying them in vaccines. In its early years, Moderna had
Speaker 1: focused on therapeutics, including programs for cancer, heart disease, and
Speaker 1: other lucrative areas. The company gradually turned to vaccines as
Speaker 1: Boncelle realized they would be the best way to prove
Speaker 1: mRNA technology worked. You have to inject only a couple
Speaker 1: of doses to stimulate a long lasting immune reaction. Working
Speaker 1: with Graham's team at NAIAD, Moderna began formulating a COVID
Speaker 1: vaccine as soon as Chinese scientists released the coronavirus RNA
Speaker 1: sequence in early January. Later that month, Bonzell asked his
Speaker 1: manufacturing chief what it would take to make a billion
Speaker 1: vaccine doses in one He looked at me like I
Speaker 1: was insane. Bon Cell recalls the Moderna plant had never
Speaker 1: made more than one hundred thousand doses of anything in
Speaker 1: a year. The US government agreed to pay nine hundred
Speaker 1: fifty five million dollars for the vaccine trials and initial
Speaker 1: small scale production, but bon Sell says he couldn't initially
Speaker 1: persuade any country to pay for a full scale up.
Speaker 1: Moderna instead raised one point three billion dollars in a
Speaker 1: May stock offering for the purpose. The move allowed the
Speaker 1: company to take its leap onto the world stage and
Speaker 1: laid the groundwork for what comes next. Moderna produces its
Speaker 1: nanoparticles and m R and A in a former Polaroid
Speaker 1: factory in the Boston suburb of Norwood, fifteen miles south
Speaker 1: of its headquarters. The plant, which opened in July, has
Speaker 1: been running around the clock since November. It looks less
Speaker 1: like a factory than a cross between a tech startup
Speaker 1: and a MOLECUA. Their biology lab, dozens of operations and
Speaker 1: quality control workers dressed in casual clothing, occupy a large
Speaker 1: warren of open layout desks in the front of the building.
Speaker 1: COVID vaccines are produced in clean rooms, some of which
Speaker 1: are visible behind glass panels in the back. There are
Speaker 1: nine of these clean rooms making the shot here, up
Speaker 1: from three in December, and six more are scheduled to
Speaker 1: be running by the end of the year. The suites,
Speaker 1: which are roughly one thousand square feet each, were built
Speaker 1: for flexibility. The process starts with pieces of DNA called
Speaker 1: plasmids that Moderna brings in from a contract manufacturer. These
Speaker 1: plasmids contain the genetic blueprint for the COVID nineteen spike protein.
Speaker 1: In one set of clean rooms, the spike protein DNA
Speaker 1: is synthesized into m RNA using a technique called vitro transcription.
Speaker 1: It's basically the laboratory version of the process that normally
Speaker 1: occurs in cell nuclei. The m RNA solution and can
Speaker 1: be made in a matter of hours, says Scott Nickerson,
Speaker 1: a senior vice president who oversees the site. It then
Speaker 1: takes several days to purify unreacted enzymes and other extraneous material.
Speaker 1: From there, the purified mRNA goes to a separate set
Speaker 1: of clean rooms, where workers spend another few days formulating
Speaker 1: it with lipid nanoparticles. The final product is frozen and
Speaker 1: sterile bioprocessing bags, encased in a protective shell, and shipped
Speaker 1: in temperature controlled trucks to Catalants plant in Bloomington, Indiana. There,
Speaker 1: the vaccine is deluded, put into vials, labeled, and shipped.
Speaker 1: When Moderna started making the COVID vaccine and commercial quantities
Speaker 1: last year, the process took as long as nineteen days
Speaker 1: to complete. Now it takes only ten days to prep
Speaker 1: a bat for shipping to Catalan. Last May, Moderna signed
Speaker 1: a ten year deal since expanded twice with Lonza Group,
Speaker 1: which is expected to produce the bulk of its European
Speaker 1: supply at factories in Switzerland and the Netherlands. Moderna also
Speaker 1: made packs this year with Sonofie, Samsung Biologics, and Thermo
Speaker 1: Fisher Scientific to bolster the vile filling capacity. Increasing so
Speaker 1: called phil finished capacity will become important. That's a greater
Speaker 1: share of the population is vaccinated and doctors can't find
Speaker 1: enough patients to use up the larger vials now in use,
Speaker 1: which contained between ten and fifteen doses. Moderna's production this
Speaker 1: year eight hundred million to one billion doses will amount
Speaker 1: to only about a third of Fiser and bion Tech's output.
Speaker 1: Fiser had one hundred times more people at the start
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, along with existing plants it could retool
Speaker 1: for vaccine production. Bond Sal says Moderna's headcount has almost
Speaker 1: doubled since last year to fift hundred Next year, with
Speaker 1: more capacity and a significant portion of its output potentially
Speaker 1: going to booster shots and pediatric formulations that use lower doses,
Speaker 1: the company and its partners expect to produce as many
Speaker 1: as three billion doses, approaching Fiser and bion Tech projected
Speaker 1: to supply of four billion if Novavax meets its production goals.
Speaker 1: Snopie's protein based vaccine also works, and companies such as
Speaker 1: Johnson and Johnson and Azra Zenica solve their manufacturing bottlenecks
Speaker 1: at some point next year, the world could shift from
Speaker 1: being desperately short of COVID shots to swimming in them.
Speaker 1: As the virus settles down to a more manageable threat
Speaker 1: over the next few years, COVID vaccine sales may decline,
Speaker 1: perhaps precipitously. Morning Star analyst Karen Anderson says this market
Speaker 1: could top out at seventy two billion dollars worldwide this year,
Speaker 1: slip to sixty five billion in two, and plummet to
Speaker 1: eight billion a year after that. The extent of the
Speaker 1: slide will depend on how many people need booster shots,
Speaker 1: how often, and whether Moderna, Fiser and others will be
Speaker 1: able to raise prices to compensate for a smaller market.
Speaker 1: The science on booster shots is still unsettled. It's not
Speaker 1: clear on how often or even whether they'll be needed
Speaker 1: in large numbers. Moderna has three types of boosters in
Speaker 1: phase two trials, including a lower dose version of its
Speaker 1: existing vaccine, one booster that's been customized against the beta
Speaker 1: variant that was first spotted in South Africa, and a
Speaker 1: third that combines both. More variants can be added if necessary.
Speaker 1: The process for the beta booster went even faster than
Speaker 1: for the original shot. Design work started on January twenty second,
Speaker 1: with Moderna ultimately switching out some of the chemical letters
Speaker 1: in its original mRNA vaccine so they corresponded to the
Speaker 1: spike protein in the beta variant. Manufacturing began three days
Speaker 1: later and The first trial dose was administered on March tenth,
Speaker 1: only forty seven days and all compared with the sixty
Speaker 1: five for the main vaccine. Moderna is already cutting deals
Speaker 1: that encompass potential booster doses, including a June order from
Speaker 1: the US for two hundred million additional shots in late
Speaker 1: and early Despite the uncertain need for boosters, Bonzale's pitch
Speaker 1: is that it's best to be prepared for an evolving virus.
Speaker 1: At an investor conference in early June, he told everyone
Speaker 1: that the smart countries are saying, I'd rather be two
Speaker 1: months too early than two months late. Beyond COVID, most
Speaker 1: of Moderna's experimental vaccines remain in early stages of human trials.
Speaker 1: An exception is the shot for psyto megalovirus. No vaccine
Speaker 1: exists for this virus now, and the shot could turn
Speaker 1: into a multibillion dollar product if it works. Moderna also
Speaker 1: plans human trials this year of a vaccine against another
Speaker 1: complicated pathogen, epstein bar virus, which causes mononucleosis. Influenza is
Speaker 1: an obvious target at a shot for that could be
Speaker 1: combined with COVID boosters, locking them into an existing annual
Speaker 1: market with the fiser BioNTech Alliance, also slated to start
Speaker 1: trials on a flu shot later this year. Researchers say
Speaker 1: they're hoping the mRNA vaccines can improve on existing versions,
Speaker 1: which must sometimes begin production six months in advance based
Speaker 1: on experts assessment of which strains are likely to circulate.
Speaker 1: The shorter lead times required to make mRNA shots could,
Speaker 1: in theory, let health officials more closely match flu strains
Speaker 1: and improve upon typical forty to sixt efficacy rates. The
Speaker 1: m RNA vaccines have a very high likelihood of being
Speaker 1: better than the egg based vaccines we use now, says
Speaker 1: Andrew pocash A Virology just that JOHNS. Hopkins, Bloomberg School
Speaker 1: of Public Health. He adds that the shorter lead times
Speaker 1: could shave off months from the process, but he notes
Speaker 1: that it's an open question whether there would be a
Speaker 1: good economic case for m RNA based flu vaccines if
Speaker 1: they turn out to be more expensive and only modestly
Speaker 1: better than the old ones. MODERNA is also targeting a
Speaker 1: few nasty respiratory viruses that don't have vaccines. These include
Speaker 1: mennuma virus, which can lead to hospitalization and infants, and
Speaker 1: respiratory sencidal virus, which causes more than one d seventy
Speaker 1: five thousand US hospitalizations annually in the elderly and about
Speaker 1: fifty thousand more in young children. In the latter case,
Speaker 1: Moderna's vaccine will be competing with efforts at Glaxo Smith, Klein,
Speaker 1: and Johnson and Johnson that draw on other technologies and
Speaker 1: are further ahead. Hoak says Moderna could combine as many
Speaker 1: as a dozen or more viral strays in one shot.
Speaker 1: The goal is a seasonal vaccine that eliminates the majority
Speaker 1: of the respiratory viral diseases that we all suffer from.
Speaker 1: He says, the only way that we're really going to
Speaker 1: get good broad population immunity against these respiratory viruses is
Speaker 1: if we can make it feel like your flu shot.
Speaker 1: The concept makes sense on paper, according to Tony Moody,
Speaker 1: a physician researcher at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, which
Speaker 1: is working on mRNA based flu vaccines. Combinations are one
Speaker 1: of the strengths of the technology. He says he estimates
Speaker 1: that it would cost only a few dollars more per
Speaker 1: shot to add the necessary mRNA for a given viral target.
Speaker 1: If you could get a combo shot that gives you
Speaker 1: a degree of protection against a lot of respiratory viruses.
Speaker 1: I think there would be a market for that, He says.
Speaker 1: It won't be fast or easy. Researchers will first have
Speaker 1: to show that the individual vaccines work and then perform
Speaker 1: studies showing at complex combinations don't compromise efficacy or result
Speaker 1: in troublesome side effects. To realize its vision, Moderna will
Speaker 1: have to move quickly. Competitors are investing heavily to catch up.
Speaker 1: Snophie said in late June it would spend four D
Speaker 1: seventy five million dollars annually on mRNA research, focusing on
Speaker 1: stable vaccines with few side effects, with emergency authorizations unlikely.
Speaker 1: In the future, considerations such as side effects and convenience
Speaker 1: will also assume new prominence. Moderna is working on eliminating
Speaker 1: the complicated refrigeration requirements of its COVID shot. Future products
Speaker 1: will also have to find ways to reduce the high
Speaker 1: rates of fatigue, headache, and muscle pain produced by the shot.
Speaker 1: For the boosters, the company is testing lower doses, which
Speaker 1: may help how broadly mRNA can expand beyond vaccines into
Speaker 1: the far larger and more lucrative therapeutics market remains to
Speaker 1: be seen. There will be additional technical hurdles to surmount.
Speaker 1: To treat chronic diseases, for example, companies will have to
Speaker 1: prove that they can deliver the therapies to the target
Speaker 1: organs and that m RNA can be administered safely. And
Speaker 1: to develop cancer vaccines, mRNA researchers will have to solve
Speaker 1: the thorny problem of teaching the immune system to distinguish
Speaker 1: between specific tumors and healthy sales. Many previous approaches have failed.
Speaker 1: The good news is that mRNA's adaptability also makes it
Speaker 1: easier to try out many possibilities. Within a few years,
Speaker 1: moderna could have sixty drugs and vaccines either in human
Speaker 1: trials or nearing them. According to bond Sell, if it
Speaker 1: works out the way he hopes, mRNA will make inventing
Speaker 1: vaccines and drugs a bit more like creating software. We
Speaker 1: use the same for letter code for every vaccine and drug.
Speaker 1: Bond Sales says, we can scale the number of products
Speaker 1: we have in development at a pace that has never
Speaker 1: been done before, and that's this week's cover story. Find
Speaker 1: more in the current issue of Bloomberg Business Week. Magazine
Speaker 1: on newstands, online at Bloomberg dot com and always on
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Terminal. And be sure to listen to our
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week Radio show, airing live Monday through Friday
Speaker 1: at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. You
Speaker 1: can watch US two on our daily broadcast on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Just search Bloomberg Global News and catch me on Quick Take,
Speaker 1: available at Bloomberg dot com slash Qt. I'm Carol Masser
Speaker 1: and I'm Tim Stanovick. This is Bloomberg