Düsseldorf, Frankfurt The US vaccine manufacturer Moderna is massively expanding its research activities relating to mRNA vaccines and therapeutics. By the middle of the decade, the company plans to bring several more Covid-19 vaccines onto the market, as well as vaccines against viruses other than the coronavirus. “Overall, by the middle of this decade we should have developed a pipeline of different vaccines that we can bring to market,” said Paul Burton, the company’s Chief Medical Officer, in an interview with Handelsblatt.
Burton joined the US pharmaceutical and medical technology group Johnson & Johnson in the middle of the year and in his new role at Moderna is primarily responsible for the final stages of clinical development and product launches. As he describes it, this also includes the use of data science and digital technologies in order to be able to demonstrate the benefits of the treatments to governments and health institutions.
If it goes according to the plans of the US company, the importance of the manager will grow considerably in the next few years. Because with the most valuable biotech company in the world with a market capitalization of $ 138 billion, the ambitions have long since reached far beyond Covid. Moderna sees its mRNA platform as the basis for a large number of new therapies.
In addition to around two dozen vaccine candidates in clinical and preclinical development, Moderna is working on four therapeutic cancer vaccines and mRNA-based drugs against cardiovascular diseases, infections and rare hereditary diseases. With the help of mRNA active ingredients, Moderna hopes to stimulate the inadequate production of certain proteins in certain hereditary diseases.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
“Driving Vaccines Against Cancer”
With the British pharmaceutical company Astra-Zeneca, the US company is testing an injection against so-called myocardial ischemia, an undersupply of the heart muscle with oxygen. To this end, the companies want to present new data in a few days at a meeting of the American Heart Association.
“In the short term, ie in the next few years, we will certainly concentrate relatively heavily on vaccines against Covid as well as against other pathogens such as CMV or Epstein-Barr,” says Burton. “At the same time, we’re also pushing the cancer and rare disease programs forward. In any case, we have the size and clout to lead the way in these areas as well. “
The operating business of the US biotech company is currently still completely shaped by the successful Covid vaccine Spikevax (mRNA1273), which has established itself as the most effective vaccine against Covid-19 alongside the product from Biontech and Pfizer. For the vaccine, Moderna expects sales of around $ 20 billion in the current year. The US company will announce new forecasts on Thursday with its quarterly figures. The US corporation Pfizer on Tuesday raised its sales forecast for its Covid-19 vaccine, which is marketed with Biontech, from $ 33.5 billion to $ 36 billion this year.
High expectations for flu vaccine
In the vaccine sector, the US company is concentrating heavily on various booster vaccinations against different variants of the coronavirus as well as a combination vaccination against Covid-19 and the seasonal flu. This is currently still being researched in the preclinical stage, but according to Burton it may already be available in the flu season 2022. The US company sees a market potential for its own new development of two to five billion dollars in this area alone.
Another important project aims at a vaccine against the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Infants and young children in particular suffer massively from the respiratory tract infections caused by RSV. Not only in Germany there is currently a real wave of infections in which many small children also have to be treated in intensive care units. Moderna now plans to test an RSV vaccine for adults in an advanced clinical trial following good phase 1 data. A corresponding vaccine for children is still in the early clinical trials.
If Burton has its way, “no one will have to be admitted to hospital because of a respiratory disease. At Moderna, we want to develop combination vaccines in the future that work against various infections at the same time, against Covid 19, seasonal flu and, for example, also against RSV, ”he says.
The company also hopes that the combination vaccines will improve the acceptance of vaccinations among the population: “Each of us would like to have as few vaccinations as possible. It is an important goal for us to make vaccination with the combination vaccines as easy as possible and at the same time to achieve the greatest possible protection, ”said Burton.
He sees a decisive advantage of the mRNA platform in the fact that it enables particularly fast and flexible vaccine development. “We can quickly adapt vaccines to new variants and thus react specifically in each season in the future, not only with Covid-19, but also with other respiratory diseases,” says the trained doctor.
Delay in admission for children
For the time being, however, Covid-19 is the dominant topic at Moderna. Seven clinical studies are currently underway with a focus on Covid-19; in addition to vaccine candidates for children and adolescents, booster vaccinations are also being researched.
However, Moderna has to wait longer than initially planned for the vaccine to be approved for children aged five and over. Because the US drug agency FDA signaled at the weekend that it does not want to make a decision until the beginning of next year. The FDA wants to deal more intensively with the risk of heart muscle inflammation (myocarditis), which, according to some international analyzes, occurs somewhat more frequently with the Moderna vaccine than with other vaccines.
Burton points out that the myocarditis cases observed with vaccines have been very rare overall and the disease progression in these cases is usually mild. In Moderna’s own safety database, no increased risk in this regard has been perceived in young people under the age of 18. The data from some international studies have not yet been accessed, but they will also be analyzed intensively.
Although, according to some analyzes, the Moderna vaccine loses its effectiveness less quickly than all other vaccines, Burton also advocates a booster vaccination against Covid-19: “We see a need for booster vaccinations because the antibody levels are falling and the breakthrough infections are rising. With a booster vaccination, we again achieve a level of protection that comes close to what we saw two weeks after the second vaccination. ”
The Moderna manager continues to regard Covid-19 as a pandemic. According to him, however, it will turn into an endemic disease, that is, a disease that, like flu, is regionally and seasonally limited. Burton expects that in this scenario, the time between booster vaccinations will gradually increase. “At some point you may only need a refresher every five years.”
In addition to the vaccines against respiratory diseases, Moderna is also researching vaccines against HIV, the Zika virus and the Eppstein-Barr virus, all of which are pathogens against which there are no or at least little effective vaccines. Particular attention is currently being paid to the vaccine against the cytomegalovirus (CMV), which can be particularly dangerous for newborns and people with impaired immune systems.
According to Burton, this vaccine could possibly be ready for the market by 2023. A few days ago, a first patient was included in a larger, potentially approval-relevant phase 3 study.
More: Astra-Zeneca, Biontech, Moderna: The vaccination protection is decreasing.