A viral message in the Moderna story

In The Messenger, The Wall Street Journal reporter Peter Loftus charts the journey of Moderna from being a languishing biotech start-up to one of the biggest financial beneficiaries of the pandemic

The Messenger: Moderna, the Vaccine, and the Business Gamble That Changed the World

Author: Peter Loftus

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Pages: 269

Price: Rs 1,250

For anyone who has followed, even casually, the trajectory of the Coronavirus pandemic, Moderna is a household name today because of its mRNA vaccine. Yet at the end of 2019, it was a languishing biotech start-up with no real products and dismal financials. mRNA was an exciting area from the science point of view. But Moderna had been in existence for a decade and investors were getting more than slightly disillusioned by it. It had raised funding several times from venture capital firms but had failed to give them any real returns. It continued burning money. It had a great team on paper — but the team had not really produced anything useful that could be marketed. Though it had a decent public offering, its shares had languished below offer price since listing. Even at the beginning of 2020, its shares could be picked up for $18-19.

Then a bold gamble by the firm’s CEO Stephane Bancel — and a bit of luck — transformed Moderna’s fortunes and turned it into one of the biggest financial beneficiaries of the pandemic. Moderna had been working on a vaccine for the Nipah virus when Covid-19 started spreading across the world like wildfire. Mr Bancel, who was on a vacation, decided that Moderna should try for a vaccine for the Coronavirus strain that was dominant. It wasn’t easy — but the government backed it to the hilt.
Former US President Donald Trump, who has often drawn criticism for his scepticism and his battles with Anthony Fauci during the early days of the pandemic, actually helped speed up the process of clinical trials and crunched the timelines.

Today, though Moderna’s stock is well below its September 2021 peak of $449, it is still trading at $170. It has made fortunes for investors who had held on or bought the stock during its lean years. Though the vaccines —including the Moderna vaccine — did not really stop the rampage of the pandemic, they have afforded enough protection and shown themselves as valuable weapons in slowing down the pandemic and reducing its worst effects. Moderna is now working with Merck to develop and market a cancer vaccine.

Peter Loftus, who covers the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries for The Wall Street Journal and has been at the forefront of reporting on the pandemic in the US has written a highly readable book on how the Moderna Covid vaccine came about. It is equally a highly interesting science book as well as a business story. From the early days of the founding of Moderna, the ousting of one of its co-founders whose work on mRNA had formed the basis for setting up the start-up to the hard-driving ways of CEO Bancel, the author paints a vivid picture of what went on behind the scenes.

But that is only a part of the story. Why Mr Loftus’ book should be a must-read of policy makers in India is its insights into how the US became the leader in biotechnology and retains that position. The ecosystem of university research, start-ups and venture funding — along with government support of start-ups in real terms, not marred by bureaucracy — has made Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts —the hub for cutting edge biotech companies just as Silicon Valley became the hub for computer and digital start-ups much earlier.

Mr Loftus points out that replicating the Kendall Square ecosystem in any other country is difficult — or perhaps impossible. That is true. To build a similar ecosystem, it is necessary to have a top technology university or two, venture capitalists willing to take risks and a system that allows the best scientific minds to set up companies and reap financial rewards from their expertise.

Kendall Square and the biotech industry in general and Moderna in particular had another thing going for them — the lack of innovation and an aversion to risk exhibited by big pharma. The biggest multinational companies are no longer focusing on cutting-edge drug research — many have cut back on spends on the moonshots, preferring instead to partner with promising biotech start-ups in Kendall Square.

Moderna’s great rival in Covid vaccine race, the Pfizer vaccine, was not a product developed by the pharma giant but made by another promising mRNA focused biotech start up — BioNTech. At difficult periods in its life, Moderna itself received lifelines from big pharma —AstraZeneca came to its aid when the start-up was struggling. That is ironic given that AstraZeneca didn’t get any benefits of the Moderna vaccine but had to depend on research from Oxford and the vaccine it eventually marketed was based on the viral vector technology, not mRNA.

Mr Loftus’ book is an easy and great read for anyone interested in science and business. It is, in fact, a great addition to a range of books on the technology and science sector that have come out in the past couple of years.