The most recent high-level departure came just this month, when chief medical officer Paul Burton joined California-based Amgen. The company saw a high rate of employee turnover in earlier years, especially in its executive ranks. ![]() ![]() “We are an in-office culture,” said Tracey Franklin, the company’s chief human resources officer. It was one of the first biotechs to call most of its business employees back to the office when the pandemic subsided. Moderna has always been known as a demanding workplace. It plans to hire about 2,000 workers in 2023, the majority in Massachusetts, where it is investing $322 million to open a plant on a site it purchased in Marlborough off Route 495. The company had about 4,350 employees at the end of March, up more than 1,100 from a year earlier. With its pandemic boost, Moderna’s workforce has grown rapidly. Related : Two senators accuse Moderna of ‘greed’ for its plan to quadruple COVID vaccine cost The vaccine’s deployment would have been impossible without the government funding research, helping to rapidly scale up production, and purchasing doses, said Peter Maybarduk, access to medicines director for consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. Critics were rankled by Moderna’s plan to price its vaccine at as much as $130 a dose on the private market, more than four times what the US government paid. Sanders summoned company executives before his panel in March as federal officials wound down their pandemic response. Moderna, especially, has found itself in the crosshairs of outspoken lawmakers such as Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who chairs the Senate health committee. “The prices of drugs are too high in the US, and we have to come to grips with it,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said at the BIO convention. The biotech business model of fielding high-priced drugs to reward risky investments with outsized profits has come under increased pressure from consumers, health insurers, and politicians in both major political parties. The company, like its biopharma peers, will have to deal with questions over how much drug makers can charge for their products. Related : ‘Holding on by its fingernails.’ The biotech industry in Massachusetts braces for another tough year. Most biotechs, he said, are burning through investors’ money rather than sitting on their own stockpile. “This is a totally different company from a capital standpoint than before the pandemic,” Yee said. At the time when a frightening new virus began sweeping across the world in early 2020, the company had not brought a single product to market. ![]() It is hard to exaggerate the warp speed at which Moderna has already grown. Vaccine sales also left the company with more than $16 billion in cash and investments to underwrite drug development. While personalized vaccines will pose unique production challenges, Yee, at Jefferies, said Moderna can apply to new products some of the innovation and distribution lessons it learned from rolling out its COVID vaccine. We manufacture that, and we sent it back to the patient who had that biopsy.” “It’s an individualized therapy that can not be administered in any other person. “We create a vaccine directed toward those specific proteins that are the result of the mutations,” Holen said. Moderna employee Lillie Goulart, a manufacturing associate, works in the high throughput lab seated in front of a work station bench at the company's Norwood plant. ![]() “We’re going to be as aggressive as possible in trying to get them to patients,” he said. Kyle Holen, head of oncology and therapeutics development at Moderna, said it’s too soon to predict when cancer or rare disease therapies will reach the commercial market. So the world is waiting to see what’s next.” “They’ve got a really large pipeline of interesting therapeutics. “In the parlance of Wall Street, it’s always, ‘What have you done for me now?’” Lo said. Only a handful of biotechs have successfully executed that maneuver, he said, citing the risk of setbacks in the lab and supply chains - all under the gaze of profit-minded investors. To crack the top five, Moderna will have to transition from a research-focused business to a multidrug commercial company without losing its science edge, said Andrew Lo, health care finance professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Number five, AbbVie, weighed in with $58 billion. By contrast, the top drug maker, Pfizer, which co-developed a rival coronavirus vaccine, generated sales of $100.3 billion. It generated $19.2 billion in sales last year. In an April ranking posted by Fierce Pharma, a trade publication, Moderna was listed as the 18th-largest global pharma company based on 2022 revenue. Related : Moderna prepares for transition year as COVID vaccine sales wane, CEO saysīut the company has a steep climb ahead.
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