The Cancer Vaccine That Could Save Moderna

**Ryan Knutson** (0:05)
The biotech company Moderna is best known for its COVID vaccine. The vaccine put the small startup on the map and made it billions of dollars.
But in recent years, its business has been in deep trouble.

**Xavier Martinez** (0:19)
COVID starts to sort of wind down in terms of the urgency that we're treating it with. Sales start to drop in the US because not as many people are getting vaccinated.

**Ryan Knutson** (0:28)
That's our colleague Xavier Martinez, who covers biotech.

**Xavier Martinez** (0:31)
And before you know it, their stock has really bottomed out. It's gone down more than 90% from its peak. You know, the company is bleeding cash. You look at the stock chart and it just looks like the tallest mountain in the world.

**Ryan Knutson** (0:47)
But earlier this month, Moderna made a surprising announcement.

**Xavier Martinez** (0:52)
I remember where I was. I was on a call with a different company, with a different pharmaceutical company. Earlier this month, I was in the office in a little meeting room, and my editor comes over and starts waving her hands up and down. And clearly something is happening.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:07)
Hang up the phone now, there's breaking news.

**Xavier Martinez** (1:09)
Exactly, exactly. And she starts messaging me, and she starts saying like, okay, okay, I really need you to get on a call in five minutes.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:19)
On the call, Xavier learned that a cancer vaccine that Moderna researchers had been working on showed real promise in clinical studies.

**Xavier Martinez** (1:27)
That study met two goals in both preventing the growth of any cancer, but also preventing it spreading from other organs in the body or metastasizing.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:40)
The vaccine is for people who've already had melanoma, a serious form of skin cancer. It's designed to prevent the cancer from returning or spreading to other parts of the body.
How big of a deal potentially is this melanoma vaccine that Moderna has created?

**Xavier Martinez** (1:56)
It could be one of the biggest advancements in cancer that we've seen in the last 25 years. If Moderna continues down this path that they're going down, this could really just kind of totally change how we treat cancer.

**Ryan Knutson** (2:13)
Not only that, but it's also breathed new life into a company that some thought was on death's door.

**Xavier Martinez** (2:19)
This is really bringing Moderna back from the brink financially. They've been hemorrhaging cash for the last two and a half years.
And so I think what it means is, this is certainly a new chapter for them.

**Ryan Knutson** (2:31)
They're cancers in remission.

**Xavier Martinez** (2:33)
Exactly, exactly. I think that's a good way to put it, right?

**Ryan Knutson** (2:39)
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Ryan Knutson.
Coming up on the show, the cancer vaccine could save lives and the company behind it.

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**Ryan Knutson** (4:45)
A decade before the pandemic, Moderna was just another biotech startup outside of Boston.

**Xavier Martinez** (4:52)
Moderna was founded in 2010, and it was what we call in the biopharma industry a platform company. And so what that means is that it was designed with the goal that all of its drugs that it would make over the course of its whole lifetime would be all focused on mRNA.