A top an­a­lyst turns the spot­light on Mod­er­na, fu­el­ing a fast-and-fu­ri­ous Street race over the fu­ture of mR­NA

Bioreg­num Opin­ion Col­umn by John Car­roll

Four months ago, one of the fa­vorite talk­ing points on the bio­phar­ma so­cial me­dia wave length was whether Mod­er­na shares $MR­NA were priced right or were wild­ly in­flat­ed.

Af­ter all, said the naysay­ers, the com­pa­ny had nev­er ac­tu­al­ly pushed a treat­ment to an ap­proval. Did mes­sen­ger RNA re­al­ly work, cod­ing cells to make a drug or a vac­cine? And how about all that chat­ter about how ‘se­cre­tive’ they are, or were?

Now, as CEO Stéphane Ban­cel and the top ex­ecs push the com­pa­ny to the fore­front of a fran­tic race to de­vel­op the first vac­cine to fight against the reignit­ed wild­fire spread of Covid-19, all those ques­tions have been mag­ni­fied — along with the stock price.

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