Mod­er­na ex­pands pipeline to in­clude liv­er dis­ease pro­grams; Im­pe­r­i­al re­searchers team up with Hep­tares on gas­troin­testi­nal dis­eases

→ Mod­er­na‘s pipeline now in­cludes 19 mR­NA drug can­di­dates, in­clud­ing two new liv­er dis­ease pro­grams and 10 drugs in the clin­ic. New pro­grams in­clude mR­NA-3927, for a rare dis­ease with­in the liv­er modal­i­ty, and mR­NA-1944, which di­rects liv­er ex­pres­sion of an an­ti­body that might neu­tral­ize chikun­gun­ya virus cir­cu­lat­ing in the blood. The com­pa­ny’s prod­uct can­di­dates span in­fec­tious dis­eases, im­muno-on­col­o­gy, rare dis­eases and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases. “We have achieved crit­i­cal mile­stones in R&D, hav­ing gone from four clin­i­cal pro­grams at the be­gin­ning of the year to now hav­ing 10 med­i­cines in hu­man test­ing, and our in­ten­tion is to con­tin­ue to rapid­ly ad­vance our pipeline with an ar­ray of new de­vel­op­ment pro­grams,” said Mod­er­na’s CEO Stéphane Ban­cel in a state­ment. “2016 was the year of mR­NA vac­cines in the clin­ic. 2017 was the year of sev­er­al mR­NA ther­a­peu­tics in the clin­ic. In 2018, we will con­tin­ue to evolve our pipeline of mR­NA ther­a­peu­tics, specif­i­cal­ly fo­cus­ing on dis­cov­er­ing new rare dis­ease drug can­di­dates, while re­main­ing com­mit­ted to ad­vanc­ing new vac­cine de­vel­op­ment can­di­dates to ad­dress se­ri­ous un­met needs.”

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