Alliance for mRNA Medicines Officially Launched in Germany

The Alliance for mRNA Medicines (AMM) officially launched in Berlin, Germany during the 11th International mRNA Health Conference held Oct. 31–Nov. 2, 2023. Two of the three conference organizers, BioNTech and CureVac, are AMM members already, while Moderna is taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the new scientific society. Pfizer, Sanofi, and AstraZeneca are also on the sidelines, while more than 30 other organizations have already become founding members like BioNTech and CureVac. Becoming a founder member gives these organizations a seat on the board of AMM.

Regulators in the United States, especially, but also in Europe, Asia, and Oceania, have open robust dialogue about the possibilities of using the special case of messenger RNA (mRNA) platform technology to potentially work from the same single set of guidelines, monographs, standards, and shared core principles. The broader life science community has also discussed standardizing critical quality attributes (CQAs), chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC), process development procedures, and commercial best practices.

As AMM represents a new avenue in medicines, there is also speculation about sharing pre-competitive resources. During the Berlin mRNA Health Conference, it was posited that, given mRNA’s potential to address unmet needs in oncology, a large-scale project centered around a possible “antibody atlas” was introduced in backroom conversations.

Andy Geall, the founding chairman of the AMM board of directors said, “There needs to be a coordinated effort now to educate the public about what’s coming. Because this is coming at a speed they are not used to. This isn’t traditional pharmaceutical development. This is coming at light speed with such an array of different approaches and technologies that we need to get out in front to educate the public, governments, and regulators—to put things in place that demystifies this for them.”

“As scientists we can do that,” Geall continued, “We are going to begin with vaccine misinformation and try and demystify the technology. More importantly, lets’ start educating people about the breadth of what’s coming. We’ve got people working in rare diseases, gene editing is happening, gene therapy, vaccines in both infectious disease and oncology. So, there’s a lot of misinformation that’s going to be out there. Let’s get out ahead of it as scientists, as a community with one voice, and start to teach people about what’s coming.”

More than 30 organizations became founding members in Berlin, including Acuitas Therapeutics, Akron Bio, Arcturus Therapeutics, The Australian National University, CSL, Curapath, Cytiva, Cytonus Therapeutics, Danaher Corporation, Denovo Therapeutics, etherna, Ethris, Exothera Nucleic Acids, Ginkgo Bioworks, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Maravai LifeSciences, MaxCyte, Mayo Clinic, MJH Life Sciences®, Nutcracker Therapeutics, Precision For Medicine, Providence Therapeutics, Quantoom Biosciences, Replicate Bioscience, Sail Biomedicines. Texas A&M University, Vernal Biosciences, Verve Therapeutics, and Why We Vax.