"From the start, Moderna’s scientists knew that using mRNA to spur protein production would be a tough task, so they scoured the medical literature for diseases that might be treated with just small amounts of additional protein.
“And that list of diseases is very, very short,” said the former employee who described Bancel as needing a Hail Mary.
Crigler-Najjar was the lowest-hanging fruit.
Yet Moderna could not make its therapy work, former employees and collaborators said. The safe dose was too weak, and repeat injections of a dose strong enough to be effective had troubling effects on the liver in animal studies.
The drug, ALXN1540, has since been delayed, as Moderna works on “new and better formulations” that might later reach human trials, Alexion said in an emailed statement.
A huge valuation but a modest pipeline
The failure in its first and most advanced therapy casts doubt on Moderna’s other goals for the rare disease space.
It also calls into question Moderna’s valuation, pegged at $4.7 billion by Pitchbook."
So it does not seem impossible that Moderna effectively designed Covid to be a disease that would be receptive to the mRNA technology it had created but prior to Covid had found little use for, thus putting the company’s huge valuation at risk. Covid is then “accidentally” released and boom, instant market for their technology and the company and its investors chink their glasses.
