Mod­er­na woos tri­al vet Melanie Ivars­son to the se­nior R&D team; Ex-Roche CMO San­dra Horn­ing joins Gilead board

Mod­er­na was found­ed 10 years ago and ear­ly on grew in­to a uni­corn with grand am­bi­tions for a broad pre­clin­i­cal ef­fort in mes­sen­ger RNA. Now that it has shift­ed a large num­ber of those can­di­dates — along with some block­buster ex­pec­ta­tions — in­to clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, the biotech has re­cruit­ed a de­vel­op­ment chief. And they’ve turned to an ex­pe­ri­enced hand from Big Phar­ma to get the job done.

Af­ter re­cent­ly rolling out a pos­i­tive up­date to their proof-of-con­cept study for their mR­NA pro­gram for a CMV vac­cine, Stéphane Ban­cel-led Mod­er­na has wel­comed Melanie Ivars­son as its chief de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer. Ivars­son hops over to the com­pa­ny af­ter a short stretch as VP, head of glob­al clin­i­cal op­er­a­tions at Take­da. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Ivars­son had run clin­i­cal tri­als for Shire for sev­er­al years, un­til Take­da bought them out and ab­sorbed the com­pa­ny in ear­ly 2019. She had al­so served as se­nior di­rec­tor, head of clin­i­cal strat­e­gy and op­er­a­tions at Pfiz­er and com­plet­ed a stint at Eli Lil­ly.

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