Moderna Plans mRNA Vaccines for 15 Infectious Diseases
Recently, Moderna announced its plans to create mRNA vaccines for 15 infectious diseases. In addition, it is giving scientists across the world access to their technology to design their vaccines.
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Recently, Moderna announced its plans to create mRNA vaccines for 15 infectious diseases. In addition, it is giving scientists across the world access to their technology to design their vaccines for many other conditions.
mRNA Moderna Vaccines for Other Pathogens
Moderna had been making mRNA vaccines way before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, when the COVID hit, Moderna was given a chance to show their methods could be used to produce a safe vaccine quickly and efficiently in massive quantities.
The COVID mRNA vaccines were the first approved of its type for use in humans. Now that the technology has passed the proof of concept with coronavirus, they aim to produce mRNA vaccines for at least 15 other viruses for clinical trials by 2025.
The list of diseases that Moderna will prioritize involves tuberculosis, Malaria, and Ebola. However, they will not have to create a new one from scratch. Moderna has already begun making mRNA vaccines for some of their target diseases, including Zika and HIV. Their other focuses are on conditions like MERS, a major coronavirus that transferred from camels in 2012.
mRNA Access Technology
The pathogens that Moderna plans to find a vaccine for are substantial threats to public health. TB and Malaria already currently infect hundreds of millions a year, killing millions of people. Ebola and MERS, and others have incredibly high fatality rates, which can easily cause a new pandemic.
However, these are not the only major threats to people, far from it. Moderna does not have the resources to create vaccines for every disease. That is why they are launching mRNA Access.
mRNA Access will give scientists who do not work for Moderna the access to utilize Moderna’s platform to create mRNA vaccines for neglected and new diseases. Moderna then will manufacture and ship a vaccine to scientists for testing in only a few weeks.
Moderna will launch its new tech with a small number of academic laboratories as they expand the program as fast as possible. In addition, the developers will co-own the IP for any successful vaccine development on the platform, as Moderna is ready to finance any trials of promising vaccines.
Moderna Vaccines of the Future
Although the exact details of the mRNA Access program are not fully known yet. It could be a beneficial program for both parties, and every human could be granted access to the new vaccines.
As of now, it is still way too soon to know if Moderna or their potential partners will replicate the success found with the COVID-19 vaccines by them working to target other diseases. However, if it is successful, the impact would be massive, potentially saving billions of lives.