"Never bet against human ingenuity"

A thread

From a conference call with Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna

1. mRNA is a game-changing technology which will massively reduce drug development time (to a matter of weeks) and drug success rate (currently less than 10% for traditional technologies)

2. Moderna's Never Again plan: mRNA factories are setup around the world so when next pandemic hits, we are ready to go (it costs ~1 billion dollars to build a plant that can produce 1.2 billion doses/year. 10 such plants would ensure we are prepared next time).

3. Over the last 20 years, 80 viruses have emerged that proved harmful to humans. We have vaccines for only a few of them.

4. Four hundred million dollars is all it takes:

There are around 20 viruses around the world currently that have the potential to mutate and become the next pandemic. Preclinical work on each virus costs ~20 million dollars so with 400 million the world would be prepared.

5. According to Bancel, private sector (Morgan Stanley and capital markets) played massive role in getting Moderna to scale up capacity when governments were dragging their feet or refusing outright. Delay by gov's resulted in limited supplies this year, unfortunately.

6. Finally, the good news: mRNA tech is a game-changer!

a) quick to design drugs/vaccines (weeks vs. years)
b) super low cost (enzymes/water = key inputs
c) much higher success rate than than current 10% for standard tech drugs
d) easy to program/tweak
e) easy to mass produce