In this podcast interview, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel outlines the company’s breakthrough individualized mRNA cancer vaccine for melanoma, reporting 2‑year and 3‑year overall survival improvements of 44% and 49% respectively compared with Merck’s Keytruda. He explains the plan to seek accelerated regulatory approval and launch a Phase 3 trial, emphasizing a partnership with Merck that combines Merck’s checkpoint inhibitor with Moderna’s personalized intramuscular product. Bancel announces expansion of the mRNA platform into lung cancer studies and highlights a robust pipeline that includes RSV, flu, and several other Phase 3 programs slated for 2024‑25. He addresses Moderna’s financial trajectory after the COVID‑19 vaccine surge, noting a shift to an endemic market, rising U.S. market share to over 50%, and projected $4 billion in sales for 2024, with additional launches in 2025. Organizational changes are discussed, such as flattening the sales hierarchy and direct reporting to the CEO to drive market share and RSV launch. Finally, Bancel reflects on public perception, defending the company’s role during the pandemic and positioning the mRNA platform as a transformative information‑technology‑based approach to drug development.
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On the beginning, during, and end of COVID Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel Gave us great, great leadership. We know it out of the incredible program, the University of Minnesota Biological Engineering. Stephane, I want to go to one of the great people we lost this year, which was a singer-songwriter, Jimmy Buffett. He died of skin cancer. What are you going to do about skin cancer? Every listener, every viewer, it's an unspoken fear.
Well, good morning and thank you for having me today. And you're right, today is a huge day of hope for cancer patients in general and for melanoma patients first. Skin cancer is a scary thing. And what we are doing at Moderna is we're using our technology to develop individualized treatment where we make a different chemical drug for different patients. Everybody gets a different drug customized to the DNA of their cancer cell. And the data are striking. We compared our drug to the best drug available today, Keytruda from Merck, a checkpoint inhibitor. And the 2-year data that we shared a year ago showed 44% improvement of free survival of people on this. Today, we're announcing the 3-year survival is now at 49%. It's already 1 in 2 people, if you think about it, that are surviving versus the best drug available today to them. Right. We still have a lot of ideas scientifically, manufacturing-wise, on how we think we can even improve that. And so we are rushing this into a phase 3. The phase 3 is recruiting very quickly. But we also at the same time, because the data is so strong, you know, there's around 300,000 people who die of skin cancer per year around the world. We also wanted to talk to regulators to see, is there a path for accelerated approval? Because the safety profile, the toxicity is very similar to that drug that you draw alone. And so you have a very interesting risk-reward opportunity here for patients, which is you have a 1 in 2 chance to make it with our drug, right? Out of 3.
You mentioned Stephane Merck, or I think of Bristol-Myers and their commitment to cancer therapies over decades and decades. Can you do the this by going alone or by definition to someone with your huge triumph in COVID? Do you need to merge in, joint venture in some form with a bigger platform?
Yes, actually, we are partnered with Merck. So what is interesting about this study that we are sharing today is we compare 2 populations. One population gets the Merck drug and the other population gets the Merck drug and as an intramuscular, so just injected in your arm, or product that is customized, individualized for them. And that's where you see the big difference of 1 in 2 people surviving versus the drug alone. So we're going to partner with Merck commercially, clinically. Some clinical studies Moderna team is doing, some clinical studies Merck team is doing. We also announced on Monday we're starting with a lung study. As you know, lung is a big killer in cancer, unfortunately. We believe that our technology will also have a big impact on lung cancer. So we're very excited and we are going after many more cancers, starting more studies in 2024.
Stephane, Moderna got a huge boost from the COVID vaccine. We saw that in the share price, that it rose tremendously and then it struggled last year, shares lower by almost 30%. This year, the shares are lower by 56%. How important is it to you to get the cancer vaccine off the ground to offset Does that offset the lack of sales in some of the COVID vaccines that we've seen with the latest, in particular Pfizer?
Yes. So if you think about what happened with the company in 2019, we had no sales. And then what happened with COVID we had in '21 $18 billion of sales, which is a lot compared to even a lot of pharmaceutical companies. And then in 2021, $18 billion of sales. So in 2022. And so if you look at it We are moving into an endemic market. As we said, in '24, we anticipate at least $4 billion of sales. We're gaining market share. We're working on growing the market as well. But in the US, if you look at it, last year we had 36% market share. The last few weeks we had 52% to 53% market share. We're actually now the leader in the US. And if you look in '24, we're launching RSV, which is a big opportunity. If you look at what Pfizer and GSK reported in Q3. The market is around 2x what analysts expected. So it's great for us because we believe we are coming with the best products on the market. We have more launches in '25— flu, flu plus COVID combined, and then cancer as early as '25. So we're basically going into sales growth and the pipeline is really exciting. We have 7 programs in phase 3. So Moderna, it's not a one-drug company, it's a platform. And there's not been platforms before us. So I think a lot of people are still getting their head around what does it look like. But if you look at all the drugs that are working, we have had COVID working and then RSV working in phase 3 and then flu working in phase 3. 3 out of 3 products in a row with positive phase 3. That doesn't happen in pharmaceutical companies because they use old analog technology. We're using an information technology. And so the pace at which we're going to grow the company I think it's going to be quite unprecedented.
Well, let's talk about your sales team. Your chief commercial officer is leaving, as we understand. What are you planning to do differently?
So actually what we've done is we decided with the board and the team to actually take a layer out because we said the priority for '24 and '25 is sales. And so now the regions report directly into me. I spent the last 2 days with the sales team really sweating what are we doing? Detail by detail to grow the markets, to gain more market share, and to do a superb launch for RSV. I believe with RSV we have the best product. The products of our competitors that are being used today on the market are very cumbersome for pharmacists to prepare. Our product is a prefilled syringe. We'll be the only product in the market. Look at pharmacy retail. We have even strikes because it's so hard for people in the pharmacy to deal with all the load of work. During the fall season. So we're just working on all those things to make sure we drive sales growth and we accelerate our sales.
Stephane, I wanted to finish on something quite delicate. You run quite a polarizing company, celebrated in many ways for the tremendous innovation. But I think there's always going to be a degree of resentment towards companies that benefited from the policy that pushed people to take your products. Do you think that's something you need to repair?
Look, there was an enemy which was a virus, and we worked tirelessly 7 days a week to get the vaccine out. It has been shown by several public health analyses that we saved millions of lives around the world. What policy officials decided to do in different countries around the world was not the company's decision. It was the company's decision of governments. Our enemy was a virus. I think we had a tremendous impact on lives, helped a lot of people, helped all of us to go back into the real world in terms of kids going back to school, not worrying about parents, not worrying about friends that have diseases. We are now working on cancer and other things that this company is about.
Stephane, appreciate your update and looking forward to more of the same in the year to come. Stephane Bancel there of Moderna.
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