Specialist
Former President at Moderna Inc
Agenda
- Key developments in the mRNA Vaccines space relating to Moderna and CureVac for Coronavirus
- Delivery route and formulation challenges of mRNA vaccines for infectious disease
- Insights into applicability to this new strand
- Comparison with conventional vaccines and parallels drawn to infectious disease
Questions
1.
Could you give an overview of RNA efforts in therapeutic and prophylactic vaccines? What does the research indicate about the promise of mRNA vaccines compared to standard vaccines? Could you highlight mRNA vaccines’ advantages, disadvantages and where the research is taking us?
2.
What particular advantages would you say Moderna has in producing an mRNA COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine? What challenges does it face? How would you assess its capability of being first to market with a vaccine compared to other players entering the race that are not mRNA-focused?
3.
You mentioned Rabies and Zika when discussing the challenges of prophylactic vaccines. Do you think researching a COVID-19 vaccine could parallel Rabies and Zika, or do you think COVID-19 could be unique and perhaps even more challenging in getting those surface protein sequences right? It seems like this would be a challenge across players. You mentioned Moderna having some potentially unique strengths, so could you comment further on this?
4.
You mentioned that Moderna has strengths in manufacturing. How could CureVac having potentially transportable mRNA printing facilities give it a manufacturing advantage? Could you compare the manufacturing capabilities of any other players who are entering the race to Moderna’s?
5.
Could you outline if there are precedents for the use of biological printers?
6.
Given the manufacturing challenges we have discussed, and the potential challenges or additional processes required for patient accrual, does Moderna’s three-month timeline for launching its COVID-19 vaccine trial makes sense to you, or do you think it will probably spill over into a longer period?
7.
Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, how would you have ranked players such as Moderna, CureVac, BioNTech, Inovio or others by their infectious disease pipelines and capabilities, in terms of R&D, clinical experience or having the necessary resources?
8.
When comparing a potential mRNA vaccine to some of the standard vaccines – especially coming from larger players entering the race such as Gilead – could Moderna be disadvantaged from a commercialisation standpoint?
9.
Which types of labs or research institutions seem to be working on the potential alternative COVID-19 treatment you mentioned?
