Moderna, the skyrocketing startup that has raised more than $400 million through a series of agreements and funding rounds over the past few years without even having a single drug in clinical trials yet, is moving into its new large offices in Cambridge. This move will add more offices, laboratories, and industrial spaces for Moderna, a company that today has approximately 170 employees, just three years after its founding, and plans to add an additional 20 to 40 jobs by the end of the year.
But more importantly, Moderna’s revelation about a seismic shift in the strategy it has followed so far. While the initial plan when it started a few years ago was both to create an mRNA platform and to develop its own mRNA drugs, it silently changed this focus.
Now Moderna plans to design and manufacture the prototypes of these drugs in its own laboratories, but then transfer them to independent spinout companies that will leave Moderna’s nest and develop the drugs.
If you take a look at moderna’s website, for example, you will see a group of pre-clinical programs for genetic disorders and for hemophilia and blood factors and a separate group that is being developed within the framework of the alliance with DARPA. All these programs will be channeled into start-ups, according to CEO Stephane Bancel.
As readers of Xconomy know very well, Moderna was founded by the investment firm Flagship in 2010, remained in obscurity for several years, and then burst into the spotlight a year ago by securing a massive funding package through a series of agreements with companies such as AstraZeneca, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and DARPA, while also closing deals for additional financing. These moves left Moderna with $413 million in the bank to proceed with its ambitious plan to create injectable mRNA molecules that would activate the production of protein-based drugs inside the body—a completely new pharmaceutical approach, if it works in humans.
Date: June 12, 2014
Source: xconomy.com (site for the biotech economy)