More ‘science fiction’ in store as Moderna grows up

It’s less than two years since Moderna brought its coronavirus vaccine to the world, but the company’s global chief executive Stephane Bancel is already turning his mind to another medical mystery: cancer.

The boss of the $US51 billion ($81.3 billion) Boston-based biotech, which emerged from relative obscurity in 2020 to become one of the best-known brands of the pandemic, is waiting on data from the company’s phase 2 trials of a personalised cancer vaccine.

Moderna chief executive Stephane Bancel.Credit:AP

“It’s a long shot, but I like our chances,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age when visiting Melbourne last month.

“It is a science fiction type of science, which is, you make one [vaccine] for every human being based on the sequence of cancer cells.”

Earlier this month Moderna inked a deal with New York Stock Exchange-listed Merck to commercialise that cancer vaccine product, which trains the immune system to mount a response to a specific tumour in the body, is currently in trials for patients with high-risk melanoma.

Partnerships like these leave no doubt that the Moderna of 2022 is worlds away from the drug developer startup that listed on the Nasdaq in 2018.

The US government’s Operation Warp Speed pumped funding into the business to help turn its mRNA research into a major tool for fighting the coronavirus. At the same time, it transformed the company into an operation with billions to deploy into science.

Biotech is a cash-hungry business – and Bancel is clear that the strength of Moderna’s balance sheet is not only truly unique in the sector, but also the key to the company’s beyond COVID.

“For 10 years we have believed that money might work, and we had no money. And we know money works, and we have all the money,” he said.

The scale of the company’s success truly hit him when a friend sent him a newspaper cartoon in December 2020, depicting Santa with the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines as Christmas gifts. In 2021, the business reported net income of $US12.2 billion ($19.2 billion).

At a staff meeting in January 2021, Bancel arrived with a challenge.

“I told the team: ‘I’ve been thinking a lot over the last couple of weeks. I wish I could change the company’s name’. And I paused – for a long time,” he said.

The name-change suggestion was a prompt to get his staff thinking about what the business could be on the other side of the pandemic. After a decade of struggling for resources, money was now no object and the goal posts for success had altered.

“We need to change our thinking because it is not the same company. When fundamental things change, and you keep the same plan – something’s wrong.”

Australia looks set to play a key part in the next chapter of the biotech’s history. After much hand-wringing about the lack of onshore sovereign vaccine manufacturing, the Morrison and Andrews governments brokered a deal with Moderna last year to build an mRNA vaccine manufacturing plant in Victoria.

The facility will initially be focused on respiratory vaccines, and will present a challenge to home-grown biotech CSL if Moderna ends up bringing its combined coronavirus and flu vaccines to market.

The company’s investment in Melbourne leaves the door open for other new treatments to one day be made in Australia. While the plant’s initial focus is COVID and respiratory products, Bancel says the business is planning to be in Australia permanently, and could roll out other production here.

“Could we do more in Australia over the next 5-10 years? Of course,” he said. “It’s a good, fertile ground for innovation in Australia. We see the plant as a stepping stone.”

Over the past two years the nation has gone from having no capacity to develop or produce mRNA vaccines at scale to having several high-tech projects in the works.

Moderna’s manufacturing site at Monash University is set to come online by 2024. Meanwhile, CSL is also building an $800 million influenza vaccine plant at Tullamarine, which could also allow its own mRNA flu product, which is currently in development, to be made onshore.

Earlier this month, Pfizer’s vaccine partner BioNTech confirmed it would set up a clinical research hub in Victoria, which would boost the number of clinical trials the company will conduct in Australia. Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas called the company’s investment a “major coup” that would open up opportunities for researchers to collaborate with global companies.

Not only do these investments turbocharge the nation’s biotechnology sector, they could also result in Australian patients getting easier access to cutting-edge drugs made onshore.

Those treatments extend far beyond what will be needed to fight the rest of the pandemic. Moderna currently has 32 vaccine projects in development, from Epstein-Barr virus to HIV.

“Not every one is going to work, trust me – it will be literally a miracle if every one works. But a lot are going to work,” Bancel said.

At the same time, he is clear COVID is not going anywhere. “I believe the base case scenario, is that we will have more variants in the future and COVID is never leaving the planet.”

As a self-declared optimist, he’s confident boosting will help prepare the community for future risks while Moderna turns its mind to fighting other major diseases with vaccination. “I believe the best medicine is prevention.”

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