Buoyed by newly published, early data on its experimental Covid-19 vaccine, Moderna on Wednesday cracked onto the list of the 20 most valuable biopharma companies, as measured by market capitalization.
Moderna — $31 billion market value — is the only drugmaker in the Top 20 without an approved product. That is a remarkable achievement, especially for a company pursuing an unproven messenger RNA technology. It’s also a depressing indictment of the U.S. response to the pandemic.
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When I saw the headline I thought this article would make a different point, and it’s disappointing that it didn’t do so. One might say that the real indictment of the US response is that a company that’s received hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding for trials and expanding manufacturing, essentially de-risking the vaccine project, is expected to become so profitable if the vaccine project proves successful.
Vaccines are the dried flowers of our plague. They will arrive too late, confer limited immunity, require boosters, and likely have safety issues as Moderna’s effort certainly does. The real hope is monoclonal cocktails that will arrive in the fall. Journalist need to start educating the public about these treatments so they are not politicized and misused. We cannot afford another fumble when these become available and world needs to know that Santa Claus is not coming.
Adam, two questions – why don’t you cover the data from the more reputable/likely vaccine leaders like AZ/Oxford and JNJ? Why do you keep writing about Moderna? It’s clear they are focused on making people money and driving up market cap. First and foremost, our business is about drugs to make people better/save lives. As you said, Moderna has NO beef!
Steve Perkins,
So why is Gilead’s valuation going nowhere with remdesivir?
an effective treatment, like an inhibitor of the viral RNA polymerase, would also solve the problem and may be easier to accomplish.