at #JPM16 – Moderna Therapeutics turns away an extra $200 million: with AstraZeneca (collaboration) & with Merck ($100 million investment)
Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
per SOURCES quoted:
AstraZeneca, for one, has sent an important validating signal to outsiders by continuing to invest in 29 Moderna drug candidates at last count. The financial community can’t get enough. As ambitious as Moderna has been with a dream to disrupt conventional small molecule drugs and protein therapies, it recognizes it can only do so much. Moderna turned away an extra $200 million of investment that would have made its $500 million round a $700 million round. The company didn’t need that much. “It’s bizarre,” Bancel said. “I used to spend my time begging for money. Now I had to go to my board and say ‘We’re going to turn down $200 million.”
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AstraZeneca and Moderna Therapeutics announce new collaboration to co-develop and co-commercialise immuno-oncology mRNA therapeutics™
PUBLISHED 11 January 2016
Moderna to lead preclinical development; AstraZeneca to lead clinical development; Moderna to co-commercialise and share profits on resulting products in the US
11 January 2016
AstraZeneca, along with its global biologics research and development arm, MedImmune, and Moderna Therapeutics today announced a new collaboration to discover, co-develop and co-commercialise messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutic candidates for the treatment of a range of cancers. The collaboration is in addition to the agreement announced by the companies in 2013 to develop mRNA Therapeutics™ for the treatment of cardiovascular, metabolic and renal diseases as well as selected targets in oncology.
The collaboration will combine MedImmune’s protein engineering and cancer biology expertise with Moderna’s mRNA platform. mRNA-based therapies are an innovative treatment approach that enables the body to produce therapeutic protein in vivo, opening up new treatment options for a wide range of diseases that cannot be addressed today using existing technologies.
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JAN 13, 2015 @ 08:00 AM 9,893 VIEWS