For infectious viral diseases, mRNA technology has the advantage of being able to do a strain match, Bancel says, which means it can be adapted to mutations quicker than other vaccines. And from their experience with the COVID vaccine, they were able to replicate the process across other viruses like RSV, with a norovirus vaccine and a flu vaccine candidate in late clinical trials. In 2022, Moderna also launched the mRNA Access program to partner with health organizations, governments, and academic institutions around the world to create a research biobank with genomic and other information for the over 100 viruses around the world that regularly harm humans, including hantaviruses, of which we only have vaccines for around 40. In tangent, the company has also developed a rapid response platform, which is “basically a network of factories, in addition to the academic partnerships, in the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Australia, so that we have the manufacturing capacity so that if there is another pandemic, we could potentially go faster,” Bancel says, “because a lot of heavy lifting has already happened on the science and with the mRNA manufacturing network.”
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