Moderna Inc. didn’t have an approved product before the pandemic hit. Now it is a household name, as the maker of one of the most widely used Covid-19 vaccines.
So there’s a chance that we could have by next fall a combination flu and Covid shot? Or two different shots?
[Moderna’s Chief Executive Stéphane Bancel:] For next fall it’s going to be too tight timingwise to do combinations. There will be two shots—potentially with better efficacy on the flu side, because we’ll be adapted to what’s circulating in the U.S., which might be a different vaccine than in the U.K. or Japan. We’re working in the clinic on a combination single dose for Covid and flu, but I think it’s more for the fall of ’24.
…
Another one that you’re working on is a personalized cancer vaccine. Can you tell us how this works and where it stands?
[Bancel:] This is a very interesting approach that would use the same vaccine technology as a Covid product—100% the same chemistry, using it to teach your immune system the signature of a cancer cell that it has missed.
Related on the SLP
If you’re healthy with a strong immune system, your immune system will see the cancer cell and will literally chew it up. That’s why the progress in immuno-oncology has been really remarkable in the last years.
