'Learned a lot last year': Af­ter Covid-19 suc­cess, Mod­er­na's Stéphane Ban­cel plans to give rest of pipeline a big push

A year ago, Stéphane Ban­cel would have de­scribed Mod­er­na as cau­tious — walk­ing step-by-step to in­ves­ti­gate whether mR­NA vac­cines could pre­vent a host of virus­es. Then the pan­dem­ic hit, and the Cam­bridge, MA-based biotech got a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar wind­fall to pro­duce the world’s sec­ond-ever au­tho­rized mR­NA vac­cine in a mat­ter of months.

What’s next? Ban­cel is plan­ning a big ac­cel­er­a­tion and ex­pan­sion of the rest of the pipeline, in­clud­ing the com­pa­ny’s Phase III-ready can­di­date for cy­tomegalovirus (CMV), which was the lead pro­gram be­fore Covid-19 came around.

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