Moderna Named Fast Company’s Most Innovative Company for 2021

Moderna, Inc. (Nasdaq: MRNA), a biotechnology company pioneering messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines, today announced it has been named as a top company on Fast Company’s prestigious annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2021. The Company was ranked number one in a tie with Pfizer-BioNTech as the companies behind the first mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

“We are honored to receive this recognition from Fast Company, which underscores Moderna’s commitment to turning innovation into impact every day. 2020 was a historic year for the world and for Moderna. We created an authorized vaccine against COVID-19 in less than 12 months from the availability of the sequence of the virus – an extraordinary accomplishment for a biotech company with just over 1,200 people at the time. Our ability to create our COVID-19 vaccine was driven by our investments in mRNA science as well as our company culture, which fosters creativity, innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit,” said Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna. “I would like to thank the entire global Moderna team for their tireless work on all 24 programs in our development pipeline and for their relentlessness in developing a vaccine against COVID-19, which has the potential to extend well beyond Moderna to potentially benefit millions of people across society. I also want to thank the team for their commitment to our mission to deliver on the promise of mRNA science for patients and populations around the world.”

Moderna’s vaccine against COVID-19 is its most significant innovation in 2020. The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine is among the world’s first mRNA vaccines and is Moderna’s first authorized product. Moderna was able to leverage its decade of experience in mRNA to move rapidly on design and manufacture of material for the Phase 1 COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial—with the first participant dosed 63 days after sequence selection. Moderna designs its mRNA vaccines using the sequence of the virus to replicate a part of the virus—for the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine, replicating the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein (S)—rather than a weakened or inactive virus used in typical vaccines for viruses.

Moderna’s mRNA medicines are designed to direct the body’s cells to produce proteins that can have a therapeutic or preventive benefit in the areas of infectious diseases, immuno-oncology, rare diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The Company’s platform builds on advances in mRNA science, delivery technology and manufacturing, providing Moderna the capability to pursue a robust pipeline of new development candidates, independently and with strategic collaborators. Moderna currently has 24 mRNA development programs in its portfolio with 13 having entered clinical studies.

Fast Company’s editors and writers sought out the most groundbreaking businesses across the globe and industries. The Most Innovative Companies list honors businesses that have not only found a way to be resilient in the past year, but also turned those challenges into impact-making processes. This year’s Most Innovative Companies list features 463 businesses from 29 countries. Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies issue (March/April 2021) is now available online and on newsstands beginning March 16, 2021.

About Moderna

In 10 years since its inception, Moderna has transformed from a science research-stage company advancing programs in the promising-but-still-unproven field of messenger RNA (mRNA), to an enterprise with its first medicine having treated millions of people, a diverse clinical portfolio of vaccines and therapeutics across six modalities, a broad intellectual property portfolio in areas including mRNA and lipid nanoparticle formulation, and an integrated manufacturing plant that allows for both clinical and commercial production at scale and at unprecedented speed. 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 of one of the earliest and most-effective vaccines against the COVID-19 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. Today, 24 development programs are underway across these therapeutic areas, with 13 programs having entered the clinic. Moderna has been named a top biopharmaceutical employer by Science for the past six years. To learn more, visit www.modernatx.com.

About FAST COMPANY

Fast Company is the only media brand fully dedicated to the vital intersection of business, innovation, and design, engaging the most influential leaders, companies, and thinkers on the future of business. The editor-in-chief is Stephanie Mehta. Headquartered in New York City, Fast Company is published by Mansueto Ventures LLC, along with our sister publication Inc., and can be found online at www.fastcompany.com.