IAVI and Moderna Partner to Tackle Global Health Priorities Using mRNA for Vaccines and Antibodies

Moderna announced on April 7, 2022 that it is entering a new collaboration with IAVI, a nonprofit scientific research organization, to employ the use of messenger RNA (mRNA) technology to meet the challenge of a range of global health threats. The target diseases include HIV, COVID-19, tuberculosis (TB), and antimicrobial-resistant pathogens.

These diseases are estimated to have caused at least 95 million new infections and more than 4 million deaths in 2020 alone, according to the press release. The collaboration will aim to tackle these global health issues by combining Moderna’s mRNA platform and IAVI’s expertise in discovery and product development to advance vaccines and antibodies to be globally accessible, especially in low-income countries where the targeted diseases have higher prevalence.

mRNA technology enables more rapid productions of material for clinical testing. The companies aim to harness the speedier production to accelerate research and development, resulting for faster manufacturing as a larger scale.

"We are excited to partner with IAVI to leverage the power of mRNA and extend our commitment to global health across multiple diseases. Moderna's mRNA platform, with its speed, scale, and flexibility, is uniquely suited to tackle current and emerging pathogens," said Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, in the press release. "With our mRNA technology and IAVI's discovery and development expertise, together we have an opportunity to address persistent global health threats."

"Since our founding 25 years ago, we at IAVI have been focused on translating scientific discovery into broadly accessible solutions for global health problems,” said Mark Feinberg, MD, PhD, president and CEO of IAVI, in the release. “Moderna's proven, innovative platform has the potential to be a key that unlocks rapid production of vaccine and antibody candidates that could significantly accelerate our ability to solve the most difficult public health problems. IAVI's partnership with Moderna is a unique example of two organizations with complementary expertise and shared goals combining the best of our science to address urgent global public health needs.”

Source: Moderna