The Messenger: Moderna, the Vaccine, and the Business Gamble That Changed the World

Moderna, a biotech unicorn, transformed from a company with dim prospects to a central player in the global fight against COVID-19 by delivering one of the world's first Covid-19 vaccines. The achievement validated Moderna's technology and transformed the company into a global industry power.

Format: Hardback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 26 July 2022
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

At the beginning of 2020, Moderna was a biotech unicorn with bleak prospects. Yes, there was the promise of its revolutionary innovation that could revolutionize medicine by using something called messenger RNA, one of the body's building blocks of life, to combat disease. But its stock was under water. There were reports of a toxic work culture. And despite ten years of work, the company was still years away from delivering its first product. Investors were getting antsy, or worse, skeptical.

Then the pandemic hit, and Moderna, at first reluctantly, became a central player in a global drama—a David to Big Pharma's Goliaths—turning its technology toward breaking the global grip of the terrible disease. By the end of the year, with the virus raging, Moderna delivered one of the world's first COVID-19 vaccines, with a stunningly high rate of protection. The achievement gave the world a way out of a crippling pandemic while validating Moderna's technology, transforming the company into a global industry power. Biotech, and the venture capital community that fuels it, will never be the same.

Wall Street Journal reporter Peter Loftus, a veteran reporter covering the pharmaceutical and biotech industries and part of a Pulitzer Prize–finalist team, brings the inside story of Moderna, from its humble start at a casual lunch through its heady startup days, into the heart of the pandemic and beyond. With deep access to all of the major players, Loftus weaves a tale of science and business that brings to life Moderna's monumental feat of creating a vaccine that beat back a deadly virus and changed the business of medicine forever.

The Messenger spans a decade and is full of heroic efforts by ordinary people, lucky breaks, and life-and-death struggles.

Dimension: 234 x 155 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781647823191