Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA), a biotechnology company pioneering messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines, today highlighted progress on its environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy presented at the Company's first ESG Day
Moderna continues development of at least 15 vaccine programs targeting emerging or neglected infectious diseases by 2025 as part of global health program
Moderna is committed to clinical trial diversity to ensure health equity
Moderna working to achieve net-zero carbon emissions globally by 2030 in Scopes 1 and 2 and is committed to defining science-based carbon reduction targets in Scope 3
As of September 2022, 50% of Moderna employees are women, including 41% of leaders at the Vice President level or above
Virtual ESG Day to be held today at 9:00 a.m. ET
CAMBRIDGE, MA / ACCESSWIRE / November 10, 2022 / Moderna, Inc. (NASDAQ:MRNA), a biotechnology company pioneering messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines, today highlighted progress on its environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy presented at the Company's first ESG Day.
"As a company, we care deeply about our patients, our employees, the environment and our communities. We recognize that we have an opportunity to change medicine for all, and we will continue to make corporate responsibility a critical part of who we are and what we do," said Stéphane Bancel, Moderna's Chief Executive Officer. "Maintaining our focus on ESG is a key part of our work at Moderna, and we will continue to engage, listen and understand what our stakeholders expect from us as a sustainable responsible business and leader in mRNA medicines."
Moderna's efforts are driven by the belief that:
Moderna launched its corporate social responsibility framework in 2018 and released its first ESG report in June 2022. Moderna's corporate responsibility strategy considers the needs and priorities of its key stakeholders and the areas where the Company believes it can have a direct impact today and in the future. The Company's work is centered on five focus areas: Medicines for Patients, Culture & Employees, Community, Environment, and Governance & Ethics.
Moderna's mission is to deliver on the promise of mRNA science to create a new generation of transformative medicines for patients. The Company remains focused on continuing to accelerate the development of safe and effective mRNA medicines for people and patients worldwide.
Since 2020, Moderna has been doing its part to fight the COVID pandemic. The Company has had the privilege of protecting hundreds of millions of people in 2021 and 2022 with its COVID vaccines, resulting in an estimated 1.7 million deaths averted in 2021 because of Moderna's vaccine alone.1 A fall COVID-19 booster campaign could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars.2 Moderna's mRNA platform enables the Company to rapidly develop many vaccines, potentially allowing it to address significant unmet medical needs.
Moderna and the Institute For Life Changing Medicines (ILCM) collaboration
Moderna is collaborating with the Institute For Life Changing Medicines (ILCM) to develop a new mRNA therapeutic (mRNA-3351) for Crigler-Najjar Syndrome Type 1 (CN-1), an ultra-rare disease that can lead to jaundice and damage to the brain, muscles and nerves. The symptoms become apparent shortly after birth and can be life-threatening. It is estimated that there are only approximately 70-100 known cases of CN-1 in the world. The goal of the collaboration is to make an mRNA therapy for the treatment of CN-1 available at no cost to patients. Under the terms of the agreement, Moderna has licensed mRNA-3351 to ILCM with no upfront fees, and without any downstream payments. ILCM will be responsible for the clinical development of mRNA-3351.
Inclusive Research at Moderna
Moderna is committed to increasing diversity in its clinical trials by identifying the barriers that currently impede inclusion, and implementing approaches to more efficiently identify, engage, recruit, and retain study participants from racial/ethnic minority communities and vulnerable populations.
When Moderna recognized minority under-representation in its Phase 3 COVE study, the Company decided to slow down the overall study enrollment to ensure diverse representation. At the conclusion of enrollment, the study included more than 11,000 participants from communities of color, representing 37% of the study population.
The Company believes that improving trial diversity is a vital step towards achieving health equity and helping improve lives around the world.
Moderna's Global Health Strategy
Moderna is dedicated to pursuing innovative vaccine solutions to address infectious diseases that pose the greatest risk to public health through collaborative research and development. Moderna has committed to using its mRNA platform for global health since its founding in 2010. In 2022, Moderna articulated its global health strategy, which is centered around three key pillars: priority pathogens, mRNA AccessTM and regional manufacturing.
Moderna's mRNA platform is uniquely suited to address persistent and emerging threats. The Company has committed to advancing into clinical studies a portfolio of at least 15 vaccine programs targeting emerging or neglected infectious diseases by 2025 and is focused on advancing vaccines that address current diseases of significant impact to low- and middle-income countries, and those that prepare for "Disease X." Disease X was named by the WHO to represent the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease.
Moderna launched its mRNA AccessTM program to accelerate innovation and enable new medicines for emerging and neglected infectious disease through decentralized research and development (R&D). Through the program, researchers at partnering institutions take advantage of Moderna's mRNA platform to develop mRNA medicines for existing neglected diseases. These programs will leverage Moderna's Early Development Engine, mRNA design studio, high throughput-production, and iterative research to accelerate vaccine development to the clinic. Currently, Moderna is collaborating with nine institutions as part of the program.
Moderna is building regional manufacturing facilities to respond to regional outbreaks worldwide, including in Africa, where the Company is making progress on building mRNA manufacturing infrastructure. Site selection is close to being finalized, subject to reaching an agreement with the government of Kenya.
Since 2018, Moderna has increased its employee headcount by 500% with 3,800 employees in 15 global jurisdictions today. Given Moderna's rapid global scaling, the Company developed the Moderna Mindsets to further define its culture and create an environment where everyone has impact.
Moderna is committed to recruiting the best talent from around the world. As of September 2022, 50% of Moderna employees are women, including 41% of leaders at the Vice President level or above. 41% of Moderna's U.S. employees identify as racially or ethnically diverse. Moderna knows that our strength comes from our diversity, and the Company is committed to building a culture of inclusion and belonging for all.
We have developed a holistic five-year Belonging, Inclusion & Diversity roadmap. Moderna's nine employee resource groups are focused both on affinity and enhancing the company culture. We benchmark our performance versus verified third-party benchmarks.
Moderna aspires to be an active contributor to the communities where its employees live and work and strives to extend its positive impact on society through corporate volunteering, philanthropic giving, employee gift matching, and humanitarian relief.
Moderna launched the Moderna Charitable Foundation in 2022, to support organizations and causes that promote public health and access to quality healthcare, advancing scientific education and innovation, and advocating for diversity and inclusion, particularly in underserved populations. The Moderna Charitable Foundation recently awarded a total of $4 million to three organizations focused on improving health systems and healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa.
Moderna is committed to making sustainability a key priority in its manufacturing design and investments, working with partners to create a value chain that minimizes impact to the environment. In 2021, the Company announced its goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions globally by 2030 in Scopes 1 and 2. Moderna is committed to defining science-based carbon reduction targets for Scope 3. Moderna's environmental sustainability strategy is based on sustainability by design, including LEED design in new sites and buildings, natural resource conservation, and decarbonizing its value chain by partnering with suppliers to reduce Scope 3 carbon emissions.
Central to Moderna's mission is its commitment to transparency and upholding the highest ethical standards. Moderna's Board of Directors believes that sound governance practices and policies provide the foundation for establishing Moderna as a responsible corporate citizen and maintaining the trust of stakeholders, as well as ensuring the success of the Company. Recent Board oversight of Moderna's ESG initiatives includes vaccine access initiatives and facilitation of dose donations from countries with excess supply; Moderna's net-zero carbon emissions commitment (Scopes 1 & 2) by 2030, and the initial $50 million endowment of the Moderna Charitable Foundation.
A live webcast of Moderna's ESG Day will be available under "Events and Presentations" in the Investors section of the Moderna website at investors.modernatx.com beginning at 9:00 a.m. ET. A replay of the webcast will be archived on Moderna's website for one year following the presentation.
In over 10 years since its inception, Moderna has transformed from a research-stage company advancing programs in the field of messenger RNA (mRNA), to an enterprise with a diverse clinical portfolio of vaccines and therapeutics across seven modalities, a broad intellectual property portfolio in areas including mRNA and lipid nanoparticle formulation, and an integrated manufacturing plant that allows for rapid clinical and commercial production at scale. Moderna maintains alliances with a broad range of domestic and overseas government and commercial collaborators, which has allowed for the pursuit of both groundbreaking science and rapid scaling of manufacturing. Most recently, Moderna's capabilities have come together to allow the authorized use and approval of one of the earliest and most effective vaccines against the COVID pandemic.
Moderna's mRNA platform builds on continuous advances in basic and applied mRNA science, delivery technology and manufacturing, and has allowed the development of therapeutics and vaccines for infectious diseases, immuno-oncology, rare diseases, cardiovascular diseases and auto-immune diseases. Moderna has been named a top biopharmaceutical employer by Science for the past eight years. To learn more, visit www.modernatx.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended, including statements regarding: Moderna's global health strategy, including pandemic preparedness and Moderna's commitment to advance vaccines targeting at least 15 priority pathogens into clinical studies by 2025; diversity in Moderna's clinical trials and Moderna's ability to meet demographic objectives; Moderna's environmental sustainability strategy, including its commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in its global operations (Scopes 1 & 2) by 2030; Moderna's commitment regarding Scope 3 emissions; the impact of a fall COVID-19 booster campaign in terms of lives and dollars saved; the potential of Moderna's mRNA platform to address significant unmet medical needs; the potential for Moderna's late stage pipeline to have meaningful impact across several therapeutics areas; Moderna's commitment to vaccines and therapeutics access; the build out of Moderna's regional manufacturing capability, including building infrastructure in Africa; and the impact of the Moderna Charitable Foundation. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "may," "should," "could," "expects," "intends," "plans," "aims," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential," "continue," or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. The forward-looking statements in this press release are neither promises nor guarantees, and you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements because they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond Moderna's control and which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties, and other factors include, among others, those risks and uncertainties described under the heading "Risk Factors" in Moderna's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended March 31, 2022, each filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and in subsequent filings made by Moderna with the SEC, which are available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Except as required by law, Moderna disclaims any intention or responsibility for updating or revising any forward-looking statements contained in this presentation in the event of new information, future developments or otherwise. These forward-looking statements are based on Moderna's current expectations and speak only as of the date of this presentation.
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