The COVID-19 vaccine designed and developed by Massachusetts-based Moderna will also be manufactured in the state.
“The vast majority of U. S. production is in the U. S. UU. se will be held in Massachusetts,” Noubar Afeyan, co-founder of Moderna, told GBH News. Science and generation startups.
Moderna this week sought emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine from the Food and Drug Administration. With an initial federal government procurement agreement, Moderna already produces the vaccine at its own production facility in Norwood, Massachusetts. Moderna partnered with contract manufacturer Lonza, which produces the vaccine at a plant in Portsmouth, N. H.
When the pandemic hit, Afeyan said, Moderna was able to temporarily move to boost studios and production.
“We’ve been able to attract a lot of other people in the middle of a pandemic to sign up for the company, beyond the other people we already have, so we can ramp up production,” Afeyan said. “I don’t know, where else he can do that. Maybe you can do it with a small wallet here and there. But Boston, Massachusetts is, I would say, the only position where this may have developed. “
Biotech innovation Moderna’s vaccine has been at the center of the company’s attention for about a decade: programming messenger RNA so that a person’s immune formula produces antibodies.
“We identified that if we can make a molecule that necessarily has a code for whatever protein we want, and we put it in a patient or subject safely, so that their own cells can turn that into a protein . . . it would be a remarkable new capability,” Afeyan said. We had no way to do it. We had no evidence that this could be done. But we went on a trip. “
That led them to use the coronavirus’s genetic series, provided across China, to program code into messenger RNA to elicit an immune response. This week, Moderna announced that the vaccine had demonstrated 94% efficacy in phase 3 trials and rolled it out to the FDA for emergency use authorization.
“We started the task in May, and being in production in July is a smooth speed,” said Mark Caswell, engineering and services manager at Lonza’s Portsmouth site. “Probably, I would say he’s ever done it so quickly. “
Another Lonza plant in Switzerland is expected to start production soon. Caswell says it was helpful for his team in Portsmouth to be so close to the other people at Moderna in Cambridge. Even during a pandemic, this face-to-face interaction with people at Moderna has helped speed things up.
However, before the vaccine is made public, there may be additional delays.
“There’s a bottleneck,” said Gary Pisano of Harvard Business School. Pisano is a supply chain expert, who in the past worked as a representative for Moderna and other corporations founded through Flagship Pioneering. “Their supply chain is only as smart as the weakest link. So if, say, you get to the end of the chain of origin and say, ‘Wait a minute, we don’t have enough other people to administer the vaccine. ‘Well, that’s it. It’s the capacity. No matter what production capacity you have in the world, you can only give that amount.
“I’m sure there are a lot of bottlenecks, and there have been a few all the way,” Afeyan acknowledged. “I think what it takes to expand and distribute a vaccine on this scale is unprecedentedly far-reaching, which can either humiliate us that you so badly want it to happen for us to make progress, that we just want to keep running at it. “
One thing that may make it less difficult to distribute the Moderna vaccine is that it may not require the same type of ultra-cold garage as Pfizer’s version.
Another Harvard Business School professor, Willy Shih, said it with all the exaggeration that worried him. Shih said other people expected this vaccine to be a silver bullet.
“This is a strength excursion in terms of clinical development,” Shih said. You can move on to indoor restaurants for dinner and things like that. “
And he noted that much remains to be done. Early studies, for example, targeted adults only.
Afeyan said Moderna plans to begin testing in teens this month and will test the vaccine on young people someday in 2021. This disease can more or less be defeated,” he said.
These days, Afeyan said, the news is full of experts warning others not to let their guard down and raise questions about a vaccine’s long-term effectiveness.
Once Moderna does its job and a safe and effective vaccine is widely available, Afeyan said the challenge will be to make other people feel comfortable taking it. And a vaccine can help them. “
Craig reports on a wide diversity of topics, adding environmental and public fitness issues. He covered the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2018 fuel explosions in Merrimack Valley. and non-public with whales and sharks. Previously, Craig worked for 7 years at WSHU in Connecticut. He received two national Edward R. Murrow Awards and a national Sigma Delta Chi Award, as well as regional accolades, adding a 2020 Murrow for “Sound Excellence. “He graduated from Columbia School of Journalism and Tufts University.
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