Moderna: We Can Change Vaccine 'Code' To Fight New Variants

this pandemic. I think now most people around most of the world can see a light at the end of the tunnel. It's because of the extraordinary science coming out of the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. UH. And the next guest is certainly right there, and we appreciate getting some time from Dr newbar Afian. He has chairman and co founder of Moderna is a publicly traded stock m r n A on the NASDAC uh DRFA and it's also

founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. UH. Dr Afaian, thank you how much for joining us. We really appreciate your time, UH and we appreciate the extraordinary work coming out of Moderna. The world is certainly thankful for the good work from the good folks at MODERNA. Give us an update of where you are with the vaccine in terms of global distribution and production. Well, first,

thanks for having me and for the kind words. And it has been uh, you know, twelve months that seems like we're still frozen left in left March when we started going down this path, and the progress that has been has been really great to witness. And with all the work downstream of distributing the vaccine, we're beginning to see the impact that we all hoped for. In terms of where we are right now, there's a lot going on across many fronts. Production front, we were initially heavily

focused on the US production. We've now wrapped up our European production in Switzer and through our partners, and that distribution is enabling us to get volumes throughout the world where we've had early orders from from various countries that we've announced um. Second, we have announced a couple of weeks ago that we're that we've both been testing our current UH initial vaccine that's already being deployed, but also testing some vaccines that that also have additional variations to them.

In one case, a variant that is designed to tackle more directly the South African variant, because well, we don't know whether that variant will oppose problems a long term, we want to be ready if it does. So, so our technology lends itself to a very rapid response and we can change essentially the code of the of the m R and A we use and very quickly have

a slightly different immune response. We also have announced going into younger populations to have to eighteen and just yesterday we are now starting our trial phase two three trials that will be a careful trial going from twelve down to six month old. We think it's very very important that that piece of the population be protected as well, because that's where much of the damage in terms of learning loss and school attendance has been felt, and we very much want to make sure that we can also

get an effective and safe vaccine. There so a lot of different activities going on. How many doses doctor, do you think you can produce max this year and how many can you produce next year? I mean, what are the biggest head winds and tail winds? But what are the numbers you think you can hit? Um But Durna has announced publicly that we have ramped up our productions such that we think that we'll be able to get

up to a billion doses this year. Certainly feel comfortable with the seven eight million dollars somehow many million dose numbers, but we've put in place and have many investments to enable production going up to a billion doses. That's just this year. I'll run mind your audience. That are vaccines. Since it was developed first and most rapidly in the beginning, we basically decided to go after the highest those we

could we could use and and dose twice. The reason for that was to be able to get the maximum level of protection, and that was evidenced in the efficacy numbers we saw. We are, however, as we speak, also testing other dose levels that are lower than the four

hundred micrograms, particularly when it comes to the booster. We've said publicly we're testing fifty micrograms and the found micrograms in a booster shop and and and the reason that's important is that should that be effective or even equally effective, we just don't know until we test. Then of course, the production volume could increase by two to four times the number that I told you simply because there would be the dose levels would be reduced. Again, we need

evidence for that. But but what the numbers I just gave you were at the maximum two doses at a hundred microgram exture. We expect those numbers even at the baseline level, even if we just stop to the same high dose levels, we could probably increase that by another perhaps even higher than that. UH. And we're working with our partners all around the world to estimate what kind of demand we will have UH in view of all

the other vaccines that also are being developed. And it is a global pandemic, and we're gonna have to vaccinate essentially everyone, ideally or at least as many people as are willing to participate in and and that's going to require multiple different producers. Will certainly do our part. Dr Fine, I'll love to get your thoughts on what's happening in Europe. I mean you compare that we have. You know, in the United States more population has received at least one dose.

Those numbers are much much lower across Europe, frustrating many of the folks there, And recently've had many countries halt the astra zeneca UH. Vaccination. What is your sense of what's going on in Europe? Are they being too cautious

with the AstraZeneca vaccine in a political issue? You know, I can't comment on the political side, but let me just start by saying that the regulatory agencies and the health agencies in each of these countries, I believe are well armed to explore the facts around each of the reports,

and they have to do that. And I think that there is a scientific way to determine the causal links of of what's been observed so that we don't kind of conflate what maybe correlation or a number of events that would happen when that many people I enter a program, any vaccine program. Keep in mind, these are numbers that generally we don't see, let alone in such a short

period of time. Maybe the flu vaccine is the is one of the most abundantly used ones, and they don't compare to the numbers that we're that we're getting to h and so I think that the regulatory health agencies have to follow these things and get at the fact. In the meantime, speculation about this is completely onwul and

and it's rampant. There's a lot of expert speculation about it could be this, it could be that, and and I just think we have to keep in mind that we're gonna need multiple vaccine types in order to do the job. It's really important that we handle each of them without in the meantime, E wrote in confidence. And so I think people are doing the right thing. It is up to each country to decide what they do

when they're gathering the fact. But I don't think anybody should assume that when they suspend a distribution of vaccine that therefore means there's something wrong with it. What it means is that the process to figure that out takes a little bit of time, and in that timeframe, they're choosing to be safer because they're balancing the impact of a vaccine helping avoid infections with the potential risk that

is perceived. And that's the decision they make. Even though you're even though you founded the company and you're the chairman, were you impressed with the speed of development as well? I mean, um, you know you astounded the likes of Bill Gates, who has a lot of experience in in vaccines, and um, I wonder if you can use what you found to develop other things as quickly as you did with this. Well, there, there's a couple of ways I can answer that question. And so the answers, as you

might expect, yes and no. And here's why. First of all, you know, Madarna was founded ten years ago for the express purpose of building a platform the likes of which have never existed that, for the first time, makes an information molecule and code molecule, a messenger on a into a drug. We've never seen that before. All the drugs

we used today are chemicals and proteins. They don't have the characteristic of an information molecule where you can change the code, get a different protein at will, recombine use the same pieces in a slightly different way. So kind of the notion of having a bit programmable, these are not things that have been available, and so speed of of design implementation has always been an important part of

our platform. The ironic part is that it almost doesn't matter in normal times pharmaceutical development, because you have to hurry up and wait right so you can do all these things quickly, and then you have to wait for years and years of clinical testing and trial. But in a pandemic, when we could test it so rapidly. Actually, the speed of being able to offer a solution was not surprising. What was surprising was that the subsequent steps were done so quickly, and that took a lot of

coordination with NIH, with FDA, with many many entities. And what was surprising was that the number of things that could have gone wrong along the way, very little of which we controlled once we made the actual vaccine product. Actually, uh, let's say UM complied or or or or or or went our way, if you will, as well as our fiser and bantech so that we could get to the

other end of the road. That is kind of the more gratifying, you know, you don't want to say surprising, because you of course hope that that's the case, but it hardly ever ends up that way. Yeah, hey, Dcor, we just you know, real quick and love to get your thoughts on Rubious Therapeutics. I know you're on the board of that company, and that's how to significant cancer break there if you could briefly just kind of tell

us what's going on there, very briefly. Rubious is part of the family of companies that have emerged out of flagship pioneering, as is Maderna with a common thread of it being based on a platform. In that case, we engineered for the first time red cells, red blood cells that when we gave two cancer patients alert their immune

system and activate them to go after the cancer. And just this Monday, we announced preliminary data from our phase one trial that showed very clearly in solid tumors that otherwise I have no immune uh responses, that suddenly with these red cells that we've developed, we saw two of them show partial responses, multiple other ones showing the markers of immune activation. And that's a whole new ray of hope for solid tumors that we could use the body's

immune system. The interesting thing is that it's the same immune system that we're deploying against with vaccines against the infection, also now being trained to go after cancer, and so different platforms will go about this in different ways, but quite encouraging preliminary information. All right, well, we really appreciate your time. Again, I know you're very busy with things well, saving the world basically, so much respect Dr new bar if I, and thank you so much for joining us

the chairman of MODERNA and also the CEO flagship. Let's focus in on rates right now. We have Ed Alusani, senior interest rate and Currency analyst at Columbia thread Needle and Ed we're looking at right now at UM rates that are all rising as investors sell off bonds. The US tenure trading at one sixties six right now, the thirty year at two forty almost two forty two. UM. What do you expect for Drone Powell today? Yeah, it's gonna be an interesting meeting. I mean, what markets are

essentially pricing is less doubt. Uh, There's less doubt around the growth outlook in terms of growth improving in the course of this year next year. There's less doubt about the employment outlook in terms of the FED being able to hit the maximum employment bogies over the next you know,

twoss to eighteen months and and start tapering. And there's less doubt about the FED being able to meet its inflation mandate UM, getting inflation to overshoot, anchoring inflation expectations higher UM, and that's moving the entire rates complex higher. And I think Power is going to have a tricky communication problem here because the forecast, the economic projections you know, by and large are going to reflect some of these trends.

Particularly in employment and growth. I think there's a question mark around inflation and the communication challenges. UM, how do you guide uh that funds rates or expectations for FED funds rates in an environment where UM risks are starting to scow to the upside UM and that's that's a difficult spot for them. Yeah. So, I mean it does the chairman run the risk of the market kind of

moving past him. I mean, it seems like he's going to have to acknowledge what we're seeing in the marketplace today. But I know that's a tight rope to walk. Yeah, I mean, that's that's definitely a risk. You know, the market participants of the way, like like ourselves, we're single cell organisms. We uh, we don't we we we don't parse this stuff, um at the level of details that

I think the FED expects us too. And UM. You know, markets have started front running this in the course of the past you know, four to five months, we've started to bring forward the hiking cycle as the outlook for for growth and inflation improved in in the last quarter of UM. Now and you see, by the way, by the way, you see a seventy chance that the FED will hike at the end of two so even you're bringing it into next year. Well that those are the odds that are in in the swaps. So those are

the market odds, UM that are currently in the price. Yeah, so that's market pricing. You know, from my perspective, that's that's quite aggressive. That leaves the Fed absolutely no room for error in terms of achieving its inflation UH targets and UH you know, let's let's take a step back. The set has not achieved them in the course of

the past twenty five years. UM. Coming out of recession and being able to hit these bogies within you know, twelve twenty four months of a relatively deep recession, UH would would really be quite extraordinary. End. So the markets are pricing an exceptionally positive scenario for the FED in the moment. Alright, ed, how about on the bond purchasing activity. What kind of messaging do you think we will here

out of Chairman Pal today. I don't think we'll hear anything. Um. You know, guidance for the balance sheet has been anchored by UM, you know, essentially this this this few that they need to see substantial further progress in quotation marks UM around improvement in the economy, both in labor and inflation. UM. They've been exceptionally vague by by design around this, and there's no indications that they need to adjust or that they're willing to adjust this guidance UM at this stage.

You know, the threshold in my mind on that front really remains whether there's there's a spillover from rates markets into credit. If if credit spreads start to widen, financial conditions start to tighten, particularly that happens in the distorterly way. UM, there's a really good reason uh to I think engage in in in strengthening guidance for the balance sheet or

maybe increasing purchases UM. At the moment, they have shown no appetite to do that, uh, And I personally think that's, uh, that's a little bit of an error on their part. I mean, Bill Gross told Eric Shatzker in an interview yesterday that he's been shorting the tenure um and we'll continue to because he thinks the FED is gonna see a jump in inflation to three to four plus per cent um. And his point was, look, if if Powell sees that for six to twelve months, it's going to

be difficult to hold the line. Well, I'll say, I'll say, you know two things. Um. You know, the first, congratulations to Bill Gross, but to um all the trades he told us about, We're winners by the way. UM. Well, so let let me let me give you some some some weight to Powell's guidance. Powell has been pretty explicit in saying that inflation will likely move up this year.

We have really good reasons for that to happen and to have cod fence around that, and that's really base effects from last year and the economy reopening, and there are being some some pricing power, particularly in services. UM. He's also been very very clear that the Fed is going to view pretty much all of the inflation developments this year as transitory. So um, you know, the Fed seeing you know, three to four percent prints over the next quarter in in in headline, CPI UH is not

going to change their reaction function. They have three committed to not doing that. Now. Markets are obviously front running that. We have been front running it now for the better part of the last six months. And the question is how much is enough? Um? The ultimate test Alright, we're gonna We're gonna have to leave it there because the time but that we'll touch base with you again as we like to do. Ed Al Husseini Senior Interest Rate

and Currency Annalysts for Columbia Threat Needle Investments. Not only is this guy one of my favorite Bloomberg reporters, he's my mom's favorite at Bloomberg Reporter. That's big. Max Abelson joins us now with a piece that he has written on Donald Trump's fortune falling to two point three billion. I gotta say, Max, when I first read this, I thought, Pierre right, he has two point three billion dollars. You know,

it's really important to remember that. You know, the guy is not like ten billion dollar worth the character he thinks he is, but he really is worth something. And that's why it's fun to work with people like Sophie Alexander and Andrew Tarter uh and and the Bloomberg Data team, because you know, we we use financial findings and um loan documents and interviews with executives to really take an honest look um and you know, the reality is in

honest look shows that the man is in trouble. But before I say another word, I just have to tell you how happy I'm to hear your voice and to know your mother likes my journalism, and you know it's it's it's fun for me to be able to work on stories like this one. We we really had a good time working on this. How people take a look because it's a it's a it's a deep story and

a detailed story, but it's also really a fun one. Yeah, Max, What I love about the story not just is the content and the great writing, but the use of graphics you guys had here, and it really break down, you know, the different buckets of his assets and the and the debt associated with that those assets. You get a sense of what's happened to the value of those assets as

well as the income. One part of your story that really jumped out of me, Max, as you talk about he's got some debt coming due over the next several years and uh, there's not a lot of support for the Trump organization in the big banking circles. How do you think that might play out? It is? It is just so important. First of all, big shout out to the design and development team that worked on on this

with us. I mean, it's you know, journalism is fun, but it's made so much more vivid and interesting when you get to work with data visualization specialists like the ones we have a Bloomberg. It just makes it so much fun to be a reporter when you're surrounded with so much talent and and what they help us illustrate and bring to life and make three dimensional is that

he has a debt problem. I mean, not only does he have hundreds of millions of dollars of loans coming do he's personally on the hook for a for a pretty good chunk of that. And then what's really extraordinary, because look, the reality is a lot of business people have debt coming to a lot of business people have hundreds of millions of debt. A lot of business people

even have some personally guaranteed debt. What's so unusual about Donald Trump is in the wake of the capital riot, you saw banks like Dout your bank stand up and say we are not going to do business with you anymore. And that is not good. You do not want to have hundreds of millions of dollars of personally guaranteed debt and to have major global banks, you know, holding their nose and saying we're not going to work with you.

So Donald Trump is going to rebound and you know what, you can't discount that because Donald Trump has been in trouble before and Donald Trump has rebounded before. So no one should count this man now, no matter what they say, no one should count this man out. But if he is going to rebound, figuring out that debt is going to be really important, and so well figuring out how we can start making money, making money again in hotels. I mean, Trump said, you know, the pandemic would disappear

like a miracle, and it hasn't. And that is not good for someone with so much real estate and someone with so many hotels. It's not just the banks that have stopped working with him, right, Umkushman and Wakefield you wrote, used to handle leasing for the Art Deco building downtown. Uh, they don't anymore. Steve Roth, I wonder the guy who runs Bornado he um explored a sale of the company that runs those those buildings, is he gonna still want to work with Donald Trump? Is the p g A

gonna want to ever work with Donald Trump again? I mean a lot of these other parties no longer want to be associated since the riot. Well, you know, I think it's helpful to do what Trump sometimes doesn't do, which is to be sort of really specific and and to take things sort of one thing at a time. So with p G A, if you're absolutely right, the PGA of America, you know, um got rid of a

tournament next year. Um that was going to be a Bedminster you know what, that's right, But you know what, they had backed out of one golf tournament years ago, and and then and then they got back into business with him. So when it comes to golf, maybe we'll see as the years go on, maybe maybe maybe golf golf will will get get back with him. But then but then there's a question of what happens with his brand.

You know what, Will he figure out a way of getting seventy four million voters to become customers in a way that bullies his business? You know that that's a possibility, but he's gonna have to figure it out because there isn't a natural path to getting seventy four million people into you know, very expensive hotels or very expensive clubs

or very expensive golf courses. And then when you asked about Tornado, you know the reality is that Lornado has not thrown up their hands and said we're going to stop being in business with Trump. But what they have said is that they've looked at putting um these two very big towers that are a huge part of Trump's net worth on the market. So one thing that that Bloomberg leaders and listeners should be on the lookout for is what happens to those tornado towers wanted to Francisco

and one in New York. They may hold the key to the future of Trump's business. Fascinating. Hey, Max, thank you so much for joining us. Kudos to you and your team for putting this great piece out. Max Abelson, uh, he is Bloomberg finance reporter. Really a detailed look at the finances former President Donald Trump. Again pegging the value it's something about two point three billion dollars net worth UM and that's you know, partially done by the Bloomberg

Billionaires Index, which is rich go one of my favorite functions. Met. I actually got to say, you know, I love scrolling through Max's ticker. I remember about six years ago you did a story on an undocumented woman from Mexico who made it all the way through, jumped to every hoop and became a star employee at Goldman Sachs and it's just written so well and researched so well. Um, it's just it's really touching work. And and then of course these fun pieces like the one he's written on Trump.

You can check that out on Bloomberg dot com. All right, we are going to talk about something pretty exciting for from my point of view, from from your point of view as well. M Paul. You're a car guy, so um. We've got Chris Bryant coming on. He's one of my favorite opinion calumnists and he writes a lot about cars. I'm looking forward to that. All right, let's go to a Chris right now. Chris uh, Chris bryan he's colums covering industrial companies for Bloomberg Opinion. Chris, thanks so much

for joining us here. Talk to us about the news coming out of Germany. Volkswagen is the latest of the traditional auto companies to really put their chips in the middle of the table on EVS. Tell us what's going on there, chips, Well, high, guys, and and and long story short, it's you know, folks bag into the moon,

absolutely extraordinary. Remember this is you know, one of the Germany's most established an important industrial companies in it Saffrance has pretty much done nothing over the last decade or so, and suddenly, uh, you know, just this year, and in particular in the last few days, it's been off to

the races. And so far this year the stock now up fifty percent or so, billions and billions of market cap added after Herbert Dee the CEO, announced some pretty exciting electric vehicle plans, really taking the battle to Tesla. And I was writing today as well, also sort of copying some of the ways that Mask has managed to

attract excitement for his own company. And what you've seen, as to say, is is Fox barking off to the races now and Tesla suffering a bit real reversal of the trend we've seen over the past year or so. I spoke to Herbert DEECEE as well, No big deal, We talked sometimes, and um, you know the interesting thing is, I I asked him, does it make sense that you're only worth a hundred and thirty billion only? Uh? And and Tesla is worth six hundred and sixty billion dollars

in market cap. I mean, Tesla only sold half a million cars last year and Folkswagen is gonna sell a million evs this year among the I don't know how many ten twelve million cars they sell in total. So um. But the question I had, Chris, do you think that Folkswagen's market cap rises to that of Tesla or does Tesla's market cap just need to come down? Oh? If I need to the answer to that, I'd be a

wealthier man than I am. I bet you have I bet you have a view though, right, I mean, is is a car maker really going to be worth that much? Where are the margins coming from? I think you know what's been remarkable after the last few years is a Folkswagen, as you say, huge the uh you know, massive company acques revenues, big profits, cash flows, and it's valued at

about nine times earnings. And yet you have a company Heller, which in all fantasies company is really great technology, really fast growing, not a lot of profit and and valued that's totally different multiple and and this divergence has existed for a long time, and I think people who bought shares in the established European car makers kind of assumed

that it would never change. And that's the exciting thing that's happened over the last few days that really have seen to change now, and even you've got some retail buying of folxwagon stock out of the United States, which might be influencing the The out performance of the ordinary share has a bit compregated, but analysts do think that actually some retail buying is going on here, and that's pretty extraordinary, isn't it. You know, Reddit type amateur invested

in the United States buying Folx Wagner ship. I mean, who'd have thought it, but it's happened. Maybe Cathy would. Actually there's a little um E t F that follows the same formula as ARC called Moon. It's called Moon, right because Wall Street bets guys like to the Moon. And actually it's outperformed art by ten times this year. Hey, Chris, what's the I guess what a lot of these traditional auto companies are trying to gauge and have been trying to gauge, is just how big is the demand for

electric vehicles? Give us your sense of what you're hearing and seeing in Europe. Well, obviously in in Europe the market is really taken off over the past year, and that's partly because you've had governments, you know, sort of demanding that happened, and offering incentives and so forth, and you've seen that, you know, the market responded, and for a long time there's there was a perception, I think in the investment world that Tesla was the only game

in town. But what we've seen as the European car make has really come out with a lot of models recently in order to meet their Redditstree compliance obligations in terms of emissions and as such. You know, Tessler really wasn't you know, number one in Europe last Yeah, I think folks about group as a whole was the biggest and now expects I think, you know, analysts is saying within a couple of years will probably be the biggest

globally and that thus shouldn't really surprise you. I mean, it's a company that sells ten million vehicles a year. It's said that you know, half of those are going to be electric byty, and if that's the case, and with the kind of muscle and financial power that this company has, then then really, you know, they should be

a competitive Testler. The problem has always been that they were a little bit you know, pre occupied with themselves, a little bit too caught up with the government's problems, And for a long time, you know, I didn't really take electric vehicles seriously, and and now they are. They're putting the finance shot muscle behind it, and and frankly, you know, it's quite impressive what they're promising in terms

of battery spectories and models over the next few years. Chase, if you your long lost uncle dies leaves you fifty grand right now, you need a car, would you buy electric vehicle or or um would you buy a hybrid? What do you think? Very difficult question, you know, I I think I'll be in the market for a car over the next couple of years. Right now, I live in an apartment building, so recharging it's going to be an issue. And that was something that part was talking

about yesterday. To really need expansion of the public charge in network, and it's hoping to do that, all right. Chris yep absolutely. Chris Bryant columus covering industrial companies for Bloomberg Opinion. You can read all of his work and that of all of our good folks with Bloomberg Opinion at Bloomberg dot com, slash Opinion, or on the Bloomberg terminal. By typing an O p I n GO. Thanks for

listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews with Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller three. Put on Fall Sweeney. I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney Before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio