Moderna Therapeutics announced today that it has closed more than $40 million in financing to date, led by Flagship Ventures and private investors, which will be used to advance multiple programs toward clinical stage development. Moderna is pioneering messenger RNA Therapeutics™, a novel biotherapeutic modality with the unprecedented capability of stimulating the body's natural ability to produce therapeutic proteins. If successful in human clinical trials, this advance will usher in the first entirely new way of making therapeutic proteins since the development of recombinant technology more than 30 years ago, with dramatic implications for both patients and industry.
Moderna was founded within Flagship VentureLabs™, an innovation foundry dedicated to institutional entrepreneuring. Over the past 18 months, Moderna has conducted proof-of-concept studies in preclinical models, including non-human primates, and has demonstrated the ability to induce in vivo production of dozens of intracellular and secreted therapeutic proteins through intramuscular, subcutaneous or intravenous administration across multiple preclinical models. The company anticipates publishing and presenting the results of these studies in 2013.