Moderna Therapeutics

Moderna Therapeutics is a biotechnology company that researches and develops protein therapies based on novel messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.[3] The company’s technology uses mRNA made of nucleotide analogs to trigger the body’s natural processes to produce proteins inside the human cell.[4] This approach has the potential to produce therapeutic proteins in vivo to treat a wide range of diseases, including those that cannot be effectively treated with existing methods to develop and manufacture drugs.[5]

Moderna’s pipeline of mRNA product candidates covers a broad expanse of drug modalities, including vaccines (both for infectious diseases and personalized cancer vaccines), intracellular/transmembrane proteins, intratumoral expression, and secreted antibodies and proteins.[6] Each modality represents a distinct approach to using the mRNA platform to encode proteins that achieve a therapeutic benefit, enabling the company to develop numerous drug candidates across a wide array of therapeutic areas.[7]

The company was founded in 2011 in Cambridge, Massachusetts through funding from Flagship Ventures.[8][9][10] Moderna’s founders include Noubar Afeyan of Flagship Ventures, Kenneth R. Chien of Harvard University and the Karolinska Institutet, Robert S. Langer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Derrick Rossi of Boston Children’s Hospital.[11] Moderna is led by Stéphane Bancel, CEO and Director of the Board; Stephen Hoge, M.D., President; Marcello Damiani, Chief Digital Officer; Steve W. Harbin, SVP, Human Resources; Jim R. Kasinger, J.D., General Counsel; Lorence Kim, M.D., CFO and SVP, Business Development, and Tal Zaks, M.D., Ph.D., CMO.

 
Stéphane Bancel
Chief Executive Officer

Stéphane joined Moderna in the summer of 2011 when it was a one employee company. He has assembled a world-class team and raised more than $1Billion between equity financing and upfront from licensing collaborations.

He was previously CEO of bioMérieux, a world leader in the diagnostics industry. bioMerieux has more than 6,000 employees, a market capitalization of €2.5 billion, and sales of more than €1.3 billion.

Prior to his time at bioMérieux, Stéphane was the managing director of Eli Lilly Belgium and executive director of global manufacturing strategy and supply chain at Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, Indiana. He started at Lilly in their UK manufacturing plant outside London.

He holds a Master of Engineering from École Central Paris, a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Stéphane was elected a 2009 Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He was elected best CEO for investor relations in France in 2009 and was ranked the number one CEO in the biotech sector according to the 2011 Thomson Reuters EXTEL Study. Stéphane serves as a supervisory director of Qiagen N.V., and on the Board of Directors of Syros Pharmaceuticals.