Moderna ’s “Secret Sauce”

By MIKE MAGEE This week J&J gained FDA approval for their 1-shot COVID vaccine, leading optimists like Pfizer Board member, Scott Gottlieb, to predict that we will have 100 million shots out there by the end of April, and on-demand offerings for the general public. In the race toward herd immunity, we could easily ignore a revolutionary change in pharmaceutical design and manufacturing occurring under our noses. Case in point: Moderna – subject of a recent case study by Marco Iansiti, Karim Lakhani, Hannah Mayer, and Kerry Herman in the Harvard Business Review. Moderna – labeled by its CEO as “a technology company that happens to do biology” – was founded in 2010, with $5.1 billion in venture capital backing,  “designed from the ground up as a digital biotech company with a factory for in-house manufacturing capabilities.” Up to this point, as they entered their 11th year, they had not brought a single product to market. Moderna was the child born of Cambridge-based Flagship, run by Noubar Afeyan, an MIT bioengineer and world leader in bio-instumentation. His raison d’etre was “radical innovation.” He not only wanted to do big things, but do them faster than anyone else. As he said, “Asking ‘What if?’ questions propels you far into the future. It may be unrealistic or overly optimistic, but that’s how radical innovation happens.” To accomplish this outsized ambition, he invested in a four-step process: 1.  ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy COVID-19 vaccine J&J COVID Vaccine Mike Magee Moderna vaccine Source Type: blogs