Covid-19 vaccine maker Moderna will expand into Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia this year to better serve the Asian market, where its shots continue to be used to battle the coronavirus pandemic.
The Nasdaq-listed company announced its plan on Wednesday but did not disclose how much it was investing to set up offices in those locations to support the expansion, or how many additional people it will be hiring.
Moderna said it will target scientific and commercial collaborations with local organisations in those markets, as well as engage governments on the use of its products. Research and development efforts with universities will also be explored, as well as clinical trials for its new products.
In an interview with Nikkei Asia, the biotechnology company’s CEO, Stephane Bancel, said that the four new locations were selected because they are mature markets and that the company aims to expand to other countries in Asia down the road.
“As we think about the long term, and building the company, we believe our best way to impact the maximum number of lives, and to help as many people as we can, is to build teams in local countries that can speak the language and engage with government, with the clinician, the nurse, the pharmacist and the consumer in the countries where it is allowed by the law,” Bancel said.
Moderna currently has just 24 employees across South Korea, Japan and Australia. The company’s local teams in Asian markets will look beyond Covid to other ailments, including influenza, and cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases.
Bancel noted that other biotech giants typically have a direct presence in 40 or more countries. Including its new markets in Asia, Moderna is present in 15. The CEO said his company’s vision is to be present in all the region’s countries in the next few years.
“You have to learn to walk before you run the marathon,” he said. “It’s easier for a young company like Moderna to establish a presence in more mature markets because you can access those markets more easily and you can learn.”
The company already has some Asian subsidiaries, but these do not include any manufacturing plants. This means the region must still source Moderna products from the West in the short term, from the company’s factories in the US and Switzerland, for instance.
Moderna has announced plans to build a vaccine manufacturing facility in Victoria, Australia, but it is not expected to begin operating until 2024. In South Korea, the company has an agreement with Samsung Biologics to package Covid vaccines intended for markets outside the US.
Bancel, who has been Moderna’s CEO since October 2011 and holds a master’s degrees in engineering, chemical engineering and business administration, said his hope is to establish one or two new vaccine plants in Asia.
“We are having discussions with countries in Asia for building more plants in Asia, but because those discussions are ongoing, they are confidential, so at this stage, I cannot share numbers,” he said, declining to say where the new facilities might be located.
“There’s a few more countries in Asia where I would love to set up manufacturing, so we can supply the people in those countries and neighbouring countries from those Asia-based plants,” Bancel added.
“If we had factories in several countries the world will be better prepared because we could scale and give supply faster.”
In December, Moderna said it could have a Covid booster shot targeting the more transmissible omicron variant of the disease tested and ready to file for US authorisation as soon as March.
Bancel said his company has worked to develop vaccines specific to different variants of Covid-19 since the coronavirus was first detected in China in 2019, including the Delta and Omicron variants responsible for driving infections up across countries.
Moderna believes the best shot for the fall season this year, he said, would be a dose comprising its original Covid vaccine, combined with protection developed to address the omicron strain.
“That’s exactly the vision, to bring to people in Asia a single booster,” Bancel said. “To provide broad protection — that’s our vision. We want to protect as many people as we can.”
Apart from this, the CEO said Moderna is working to bring to market a vaccine that can protect against both flu and Covid.
The first phase of clinical studies for the combined shot will start in the next few months, Bancel said, putting it on the road to approval in various countries, perhaps in the fall 2023 or in 2024.
“What I worry about when you have a flu shot and Covid shot is people will not get two shots,” Bancel said. “So if you can do two in one dose, it’s very good because if you know if people got one, you know they are protected against both.”
Source: freemalaysiatoday
