Moderna CEO: 'Game-Changer' Vaccine Is Easier To Ship

and on Bloomberg dot com. Optimism in the market today, though a little more temper than when the Fiser vaccine news came out, I would say, Paul, Yeah, it's been just an extraordinary hair so on the back of the Fiser news, Um, it just gives people some hope that there's some vaccines. Exactly what we're speaking of, of of course, is this new Maderna news arriving as the US passes eleven million coronavirus cases. We're going to be speaking with Sam Fuselli in a little bit to give us the

context on exactly what this Maderna vaccine is. But first we actually have the man responsible for the Maderna vaccine. He is the chief executive officer of Modernist I found at bon Sell and he is joining our television colleagues Alex Steel and Guy Johnson. So let's toss it over to Alex So now we welcome our TV viewers and radio listeners to Stefan Vancell Maderna CEO. Stefan, it's been a big morning. Congratulations. Were obviously all very excited at

any new prospect of a vaccine. The biggest question though, that it seems like people have is why does your vaccine require less cold storage than fives are key to distribution? Yes, good morning, and thank you for me. I think it goes back to the fact that we have been working on Emmony vaccines for more than five years. This is the tenth vaccine that we have been running a clinical

trial on the over vaccine that you mentioned. It's the first time that they are doing need fictions is vaccine, and so over years we've been invested heavily in science, in process development that allows us now to have a much better storage condition than what we used to have five years ago. Stefan, this is really important because it's

going to have a huge impact on distribution. How much of an effect will that stability at the higher temperature have and everybody's ability to be able to get hold of this vaccine. I think it's a huge impact. Were gonna have a vaccine started minus twenty between our factory and the big distribution centers, and those are able to handle that type of product because they're already product approved by the e M e A in Europe, amature in the UK, or d in the US at minus twenty celsius.

But what is very important with today's news is we can now for to thirty days have a vaccine stared in the regular fridge at two to eight celsius like you do insulin. And as you know, every pharmacy, uh you know, doctor's office, hospital has that capability. So we think it's a very important game changer. The VPS two. To keep in mind this a vaccine does not require dilution, and uh the over vaccine that you mentioned requires dilution at the site. So you take the vaccine out, they

need to dialute it. It's an extra step. What we have to do to get the world back to normal is a massive vaccination campaign that never really happened before. And so every time we're going to be wasting doing this type of things for the product is going to be an issue. And so we think that between the fridge condition storage and the fact that we do not require any dilution on site. That's gonna be a big advantage for nurses and doctors to be able to provide

those vaccines quickly to the population. We wants it such a good distinction. Um, have you had conversations with the current administration or the incoming Biden administration about kind of distribution, how to mobilize. Yes. So the operational web Speed has been working in the US very closely with the CDC for a long time and we're in daily discussions with them.

What we're gonna do as soon as we got prov all or a new way by the us FD is to ship the product via mckenson with the US government as selected, because we are very active in the seasonal flu process to get the vaccines out to hospital and pharmacies. As I'm sure you read CVS Walgreen right and all the big pharmacy changed in the US have signed up to get the vaccine from mckinsson to provide administration in

the pharmacies. This is also going to be available you know in hospitals in some rural area, in community hospitals or GPS office. So there's a lot of work going on and this is actually the government taking care of that step, whereas you know, the military is being involved to help with logistics stefan um. One of the key questions as we all watch the case count climbing around the world is what impact will these shots have on transmission?

So what affects if I have to say my arm, will this have on my ability if I come into contact to get the virus to transmit it to others? Yes, and this we don't know yet. What we know from today's data is that if you get on vaccine, you're gonna have a ninety four percent chance to have no

COVID disease. That's obviously a big deal. But what is even more important in my opinion, is of the nine case of disease that were analyzed yesterday by the independent n I actually lead safety board was severe cases, which was the secondary endpoint of that phase free study. So eleven of the ninety cases were severe. But what is really remarkable is that of those eleven cases eleven where with people who got placebo. There were no case reported

of people who get the model of vaccine. So when you put those two data together, what does it tell you with the data we have to there, it's seems that are vaccine. If you get it, you're very high chance of being with no disease, and if you get diseased, most probably you will get mild disease. And if you think about the impact on hospitalization, I see you, and the impact on the economy where governments around the world are trying to slow down contacts because they want to

manage the limited hospital and I see capacity. So if that problem was to go away by having a vaccine that prevents severe disease like ours seem to do, that's a game changer. To your question about transmission. We will know soon. As part of our study, we're also looking at measuring antibodies that come from the virus but could not come from the vaccine, and so when we have that data will of course share it. It is possible

that the vaccine will prevent infection. We have shown that in non human primates, in monkeys, but we need of course to puttin human now just in a bit more time. But the most important thing is to prevent disease. Is if people vaccinated will not have disease, we will be in a very different world. What's the breakdown for the German population versus older people? Say those over sixty five, you have fifteen in a trial, right, So what was

plasibo which were vaccinated? What was the effect? Yeah, we don't know all the details yet because remember the company is blind dead, the data is owned and run by the independent Safety Bomb. But what we know is that we had only five active cases on on the drug and so we anticipate a good response in the elderly. We will know more in a couple of weeks when we have the study finalized and file to be f

D and in the MHI in the UK. But if you look at the phase one data which were published in the New England, were actually the vaccine of all the vaccines in the clinic that was able to sustain from the twenty five year old to a seventy year old the same level of antibody for all of a participants in the study. So we are costly optimistic that in the elderly and other people with high commobility factor we should have an effective vaccine. Stephan, I'm Christina guard

the president of the e CV. Was asked the other day what the greatest fear was. One of them was war, the other one was Mike, how big a fear? Do you have about mutation And it's our messenger, robyn Ny claic ascid the best way of dealing with any kind of mutation that we say, So let me start with your last question. Yes, MRY is the best technology to

deal with mutation. While because we've shown in January that it took us forty two days to go from the sequence published by the Chinese government of the Saskovie two two shipping to be a ni H human grade quality product, I think we can take this down to around thirty days with the things we've learned and the investment we have made. So if tomorrow there was a new mutation like the one you mentioned that could have an impact on the efficacy of vaccine, we could within a month

go back and have a new vaccine. We will not need to do studies anymore because it's the same chemistry for the molecular emoney. It's the same manufacturing process. So if you change out of a message that is very long, thousands of letters of genetic code of life, if you change a couple of them for mutation, do not have to redo clinical studies anymore. So MNEY is clearly the best adapted for mutation on the one you mentioned. We

are tracking it. We're gonna run the experiment very quickly to see those the blood that we have from the humans. We went on phase one and of phase two. Does it neutralize the new virus. If it does, we know the vaccine works. Well. If it doesn't, we can quickly change the sequence and have a new vaccine. Can you give me some perspective on the side effects. Yes, the side effects. We've reported the serious side effects in the press release for Transparent Serison. They are very similar to

what you see with other vaccines. We did not even report the fever because they were less than two percent of cases at fever. And what you see is what you see with commercial vaccine. A bit of pain at the side of injection, a bit of rensse for their two both go away with no medication, and that the systemical values is some people having some fatigue, especially in the elderly group. You see people having a bit of headache. Again, those things go away usually within the day or so

with no medication. Of course, people can take a time all or equivalent and actually not even feel those pains. Sevan, you mentioned the moment to go about being able to reformulate, How quickly do you think you'll get into kind of two point zero three point zero? How quickly do you think that cycle will happen um and what improved and do you think you'll be looking for? You mentioned temperature early on as paying more of the critical factors as

you look for reformulations. What work are you doing and how improved will be the product and how quickly? Yes, so that's a great question. I think we're of course always working on temperature and stability the thirty days when as today at French semperature is the first step forward. Because we have that data, we continue to monitor a product that is own stability in our abs and if we're able to expand it will do so. The other

piece I think is single those usage. The current product, like all the other products, is multi dose, so in every vile you're gonna get ten dozes for ten people. And the reason the entire industry did that is very is not enough filling capacity in the world that was sitting idle to wait for a pandemic, and so by putting tenders in one vile, we can of course get much quicker product in the marketplace to vaccinate people. But if you think about the potential us from the meat

too long term. In term of boosting, it will be much easier to have a single dose vaccination like you have when you get a seasonal flu shot stuff. I found a question from me. As you said at the beginning of this conversation, you've been working on this for a long time. You were looking to use messenger RNA for other therapies. Can you talk to me about the acceleration you've been through within your business as a result of COVID nineteen and I'm looking for silver linings here?

Will this help in treatments elsewhere? Will it help with cancer and other areas? Yes, I'm a place where it's going to help the most is infectious disease vaccine. We have six vaccines for over infectious disease that are all first class, meaning no commercial vaccine available. A good example is CMB Cito megat of virus. It's a virus that drives the number one course of birth defect in Europe or in the US ten thousand kids in the US

per year. No vaccine on the market. The WAD industry a strike for twenty years to get a CMB vaccine to work. They all failed well with the positive phase to study in September, starting the Phase three next year. That's a two to five billion annual pixel product that we have not licensed, so meaning it's a product percent for Moderna, and we have many more like this. We just announced we're going to get into the flu business.

So what the COVID vaccine has done for Moderna is one deal is king of a platform for vaccines, which translated into a lot of value. And two is an acceleration for us becoming a commercial company. We were supposed to be commercial in the twenty three to twenty four time frame, when now it's possible we were being commercial before the end of the year. That's called an acceleration. Stephan, thank you very much. In Day. We really appreciate your time today. Thank you very much in Day sharing it

with us Stephanel the Moderna CEO. That was Stefan ban Cell, the CEO of Moderna speaking with Bloomberg's Guy Johnson and Alex Steel, talking about out the study that just came out about their vaccine. Again, ninety four point five percent efficacy, very high number, uh, you know, kind of in the ballpark with what we saw from Fiser last week's We've got two possible vaccines coming to markets. That's certainly very

positives if we think about this pandemic right now. Let's get some more details on what this modern vaccine might look like. We can do that with Bloomberg Intelligence senior pharmac pharmaceutical analysts. That would be Sam Fizzelli. He joins us from France. Sam, thanks so much for joining us here. Boy, this number, the point five percent jumps out of it just like the number did as well. How do you compare and contrast um these two potential vaccines? Yeah, high

paul Um. So I think on the efficacy front, we should currently assume that they're similarly effective, because these are you know, nine seven percent versus nine point five on a few cases can go either way as the case as the crew. So I would call the two vaccines equivalent in terms of efficacy, at least on the early data. But then you have all the various other levels. So no,

Darn has done something that Fighter did not. They have given us a bit more detailed They first they gave us the statistical power, which is great, and then they told us about the severe cases none in the vaccinated group. That's fantastic to see. Um So that's like a protection. But we're already dealing with the eleven cases, and then

you've got the elderly. And Steven Bontel did not go into the detail, but if you assume that all the cases on the vaccine are are older people, which is very unlikely, then you still have at least a fifty effective vaccine for older people. And I'm convinced that it would be better than that. And they did have slightly better data in elderly than others did, but that's early phase one too, So everything looks pretty good for this vaccine and also fights us based on the data that

we have to date. UM. So the m RNA technology transforms the body's own cells into vaccine making factories. Apparently, does that mean that when you come in contact with the coronavirus, it doesn't get into your system and your your your body doesn't go into sort of overdrive trying to immunize your own body. So there's two things that we want a vaccine to do, and we know that

these two vaccines do at least one of them. That is, they prevent the infection from setting off a massive problem within a disease within the body, so they limit the infection and that's great. What we don't know is if they eliminate the infection or stop the infection taking hold at all. Therefore that so called sterilizing immunity. Do I do? I am I still even though I'm vaccinated and don't have a disease, still at risk of passing the virus to somebody else or not. That is the thing that

they have to answer, and we still don't know. And I'm not sure how um Mr bon Cell's answer to that question actually gets to that point. They need to look at the virus in the nose, and I don't think any of the companies have really done that on a routine weekly basis during their trial. So, Sam, So we have two vaccines potentially out there. I know there are more entities out there working at the end of the day, how many do you think will be commercially

deployed to the market. Oh boy, I mean that's a that's a tough one. So we look at the early data for all these vaccines so far, and they all seem pretty much the same. Maybe the AstraZeneca one is not, or at least in the early trials didn't quite match the data that we go for some of these other vaccines. So time will tell you in the next few weeks how that does in the UK trial. But I think the majority of them will be in these sort of ranges.

So you've gotta you know that that creates a conundrum for people or or a good problem to have. You have to choose between them, and I don't envy we ever has to do that. I suppose the reason I was asking the previous questions samus because I was wondering about longhoulers or people that you know, get over it, you know, more quickly, but then develop longer term symptoms. Do we know if this vaccine protects those kinds of people.

So that's a very interesting question. One is I think the if the this issue with longhoulders is because they have a little reservoir somewhere in the guard or systems somewhere the virus continues to be alive and replicate and keep couldn't have ac every now and then. If that's the case, then with the vaccinated situation, you will have

much lower risk of that. But if the problem for patients is that um, they've got the virus and then there's other stuff that happens in the body, the immune system have been going crazy, etcetera, that causes that long haul issue with that long COVID. Then of course the vaccine won't help that, except that if you never get a proper disease from the