DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Develop mRNA Therapeutics (2013)
investors.modernatx.com
investors.modernatx.com
> make antibody-producing drugs to protect against a wide range of known and unknown emerging infectious diseases and engineered biological threats
This is amazing. I need to follow their other grants now to see what they’re looking at
This![0]
[0] https://beta.sam.gov/opp/a6d0788057414e2c8fd6bdf45e3fd21d/vi...
[PDF¹] https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/CCUProposersDayFAQ%20v15.p...
[PDF²] https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/CCUProposersDayBriefv7.pdf
[PDF³] https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/HR001121S0024-Amendment-01...
First you submit a 5 page concept paper, and if that's acceptable you write a 20 page full proposal (answering the Heielmeier Catechism in detail[0]). If you're selected (around 1-5% acceptance rates) you go through a contracting process--overall it takes about 1 year from initial concept paper to final contract.
Once everything's signed you're executing on a 2-3 year and $1-5 million project where you have to hit technical milestones each quarter. And if you're in the top 10% of projects that were funded by the agency that year you can except follow-on funding at about the same level.
> in the same way that Trump's Warp Speed didn't necessarily play a groundbreaking role in the vaccine development
Operation warp speed, despite its Trump affiliation was extremely successful, If it hadn't been in place the US would have been similar to Canada or Europe in terms of Vaccine rollout. Here's an article about OWS: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-operation-warp-speed-worked...
For instance: the US banned all vaccine exports, while the EU exported tens of millions of doses.
https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/nov/19/pfizer-modern...
The U.S. government did not fund the companies’ research and development.
Pfizer chose to risk its own money on vaccine research and not take federal funding in order to avoid bureaucracy and politics, Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla said. He said its investment so far was at least $1.5 billion.
"I wanted to liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy," Bourla told CBS in September. "When you get money from someone that always comes with strings. They want to see how you are going to progress, what type of moves you are going to do. They want reports. I didn't want to have any of that.
"Basically I gave them an open checkbook so that they can worry only about scientific challenges, not anything else," he said. "And also, I wanted to keep Pfizer out of politics, by the way."
A big part was the coordination between multiple government agencies, negotiation with suppliers for guaranteed volumes, throwing money at the problem when needed.
Pfizer doesn’t need money. It makes billions in profit each year. But it does need the FDA, DOD, CDC, etc all aligned and a clearly laid out path from development, to approval, to distribution and eventually administration.
The R&D is just a small part of it.
EDIT: I meant to say, it's a big myth the tech industry tells the public.
I think the myth might be more in the layman/general population, but most people in the tech world know this.
They also paid for the US supply chain, and a non-trivial part of the European supply chain as part of OWS.
It’s not a mistake that the successful vaccines where heavily internationalized affairs with a lot of research money, then a lot of infrastructure spending.
They created equivalent vaccine.
I guess that like many advances, mRNA was (and still is) a new, promising technology that prompted people to found companies to bring it to the market. Moderna, as an American company, probably simply went to see DARPA when they were looking for funding because of the potential of the technology.
She had a pretty tough time getting her work accepted at the time - no one would fund it, she got demoted, everyone said it wouldn’t work etc - as is the way with all genuinely new ideas!
This is a really good write up - her story starts about half way in.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Hoerr
https://www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/curevac-gruender-und-mrna-pion...
Containment of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea is largely the defining policy of the last 70 years.
Of course tons of blunders like Vietnam and Afghanistan. Tragedies. But there has not been a World War III nor have there been large scale wars killing a sizable portion of the populace such as most wars pre-WWII.
For further evidence that the U.S. isn't interested in empire building is the fact that in wars over the last 70 years, the U.S. hasn't gained land and tried to turn the countries into vassal states like in classical European wars or like USSR did. The U.S. aims to build allies not an empire.
This way you can get yourself out of trouble any time it arrises by printing your way out of it. Inflation then comes and your debts are now easier to repay. Meanwhile all the schmuck countries holding your debt can't do much about it, since you're the only one that can print USD.
Keeping those countries close and doing trade is way better than a few extra official vassal states, when you can instead just get most of the profits without any of the hassle of actually having to manage a remote piece of land. Why have all that trouble when you can sell your current_gen-2 weapon systems to most countries on earth with loads of profit? Plus they can't ever go to war against you because you'll just stop supplying them.
I'm very pro-US myself but to think that this "benevolent world management" stance is just out of the kindness of the US government's heart seems a bit naive. It's subtle empire building, but it's still empire building. I for one don't mind, because I think out of the options there are, the US definitely isn't the worse choice.
I'm relatively pro-US, but being from EU I for one mind becoming a second class citizen in the US empire without being consulted.
This is as much if not more of a result of Mutually Assured Destruction due to nuclear weapons. Humanity finally built something so destructive we had to collectively choose not to use it because the only way to win that game is not to play it.
Now it's all proxy wars, cyber 'wars', and trade 'wars'.
>For further evidence that the U.S. isn't interested in empire building is the fact that in wars over the last 70 years, the U.S. hasn't gained land and tried to turn the countries into vassal states like in classical European wars or like USSR did. The U.S. aims to build allies not an empire.
This much I agree with.
Tell people exactly why they're dying again, see how many SpecOps get fucking cancelled.
Just because the Soviets didn't officially screw up and get everyone killed (thanks to Stanislav Petrov), that does not detract from the stabilizing effect the US as a superpower has had overall (yes, local wars like Iraq have caused local instability) in preventing massive wars between global powers that would inevitably kill tens of millions of people.
The US superpower also constantly discourages smaller regional wars and spiral conflicts, because the parties involved have to play the risk that the US takes the opposite side and picks winners. If you're North Korea and you invade South Korea, you know you're going to war with the US. If you're Russia and you invade Lithuania, Poland or Romania, you're going to war with the US. If you're Iran and you declare war on Israel, you're going to war with the US. If you're Venezuela and you have a tense political conflict with Colombia, and you invade, now you're going to war with the US (directly or indirectly).
The US umbrella shields nearly every democratic nation in the world, including all the young democracies in Eastern Europe (some need that shield a lot less than others). And this is where the Reddit-knowledge reactionary cynic jumps in and mentions the coup against Iran and how they were a democracy, and somehow that magically undermines everything else I said (they were not a democracy, that's factually false, their leadership was authoritarian and appointed, not elected; they were no more a democracy than modern Iran is; although the US should not have involved itself with Iran regardless).
China routinely lobs military threats at Australia now, recently telling them that the Australian military will be the first to be targeted if they get involved in any conflict related to Taiwan. Australia knows that if a military conflict ever breaks out with China (including over trade), the US will be on its side. It's that simple. It keeps a lot of bad behavior in check (which, again, simultaneously does not excuse any bad behavior by the US; I shouldn't have to spend so much time including statements like that, but so many people fail at basic logic).
There are positives and negatives to the US and what it does with its superpower position (people only like to mention the negatives, naturally), one of the positives has been substantial overall global stability in the post WW2 era versus all of the recorded history that came before.
In the present political climate (especially among highly-educated segments and subcultures of society), it's common to be met with derision when suggesting the American "empire" has been incredibly restrained and self-effacing compared to virtually any empire in world history. But no, it's cool to just cite Chomsky's latest rhetoric and declare America as bad as the worst of them.
I predict a lot of rude awakenings will occur if China manages to achieve primacy, and Europe will have an especially hard landing.
Russia took offence with that. USA insisted on being hegemon, phrasing simple conflict of interest as good vs evil situation, escalating the whole thing to the point where we were just one guy's decision away from being bombed back into the stone age.
Whatever stabilizing influence having world hegemon might have is nullified by the fact that USA insisting on being the hegemon nearly wiped us all.
If Russia went to war with USA, cities in Poland were the targets for american warheads.
And that stabilizing influence is somewhat debatable too. USA discourages some wars while actively encouraging others. Last few years Europe suffered huge wave of political destabilization due to immigration crisis cause in huge part by US sponsored conflicts south.
China will definitely take offence if USA insists on staying world hegemon, just as it takes offence now with being treated like third class citizen by western countries that should know their place, so best thing USA could do for the world peace is to learn how to take a second place among many, behind economy that will soon become superior to theirs in all measures, not just growth.
USA is not unique. It's not good (except for some minor mishaps). It is just a country about as moral as average one that got lucky in WWII, then got to be central bank for world economy and is cutting coupons since then while getting slowly overtaken by nearly every other economy.
> preventing massive wars between global powers that would inevitably kill tens of millions of people.
Everyone thinking this is the default in today's era is clearly disconnected from the priorities and thoughts of the citizen.
That is to say, most modern nations, you will not find someone pissed off at people in far lands that they'll volunteer to go flying or sailing after them without means and motive given to them.
https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/05/making-sense-of-the-1-...
https://tomdispatch.com/hartung-and-smithberger-a-dollar-by-...
More generally if the U.S. loses global hegemony then so does the dollar, and a mass exodus from the dollar as foreign reserve would cause rampant inflation as demand for dollars crashes.
The geopolitical situation is more complicated than just "defund the military". You can see both the current and past administration are trying to get other countries to pay more for the U.S. presence, which is a form of slow withdrawal of U.S. power, so I think they recognize that there is a need to redirect funds, but I don't think you can just outright leave in a year.
The math does not check out and the taxes fund nothing except the interest payments on international debt.
The things that were going to get funded will still get funded, because they are funded by the debt issuance and the continued market tolerance for US government debt issuances.
So, no, tax avoidance has practically nothing to do with this. The "roads and schools [and innovations]" argument is particularly weak, because whatever wasn't funded was never going to get funded. The only limit to budget allocations is the market tolerance of the debt and currency. So again - since that market tolerance is extremely vast and expansive given the lack of liquid alternatives - if it wasn't funded, it wasn't going to get funded.
Sovereign debt buyers and FX traders strongly consider a states' ability to collect taxes.
the state is in a balance to avoid a death spiral of its currency: creating more because it purchases less due to market selloff of the currency.
the main point is that it is highly leveraged and tax collection is merely servicing a small single digit percentage of the capital, and therefore the further sliver from tax avoidance is having even tinier percentage of an effect on how what the budget is and could be. the state also has other revenue sources.
People's biggest criticism of taxation is all the government corruption and wastage that it enables, and IMO that is completely valid.
How much worse off would we be now without mRNA vaccines?
I doubt anyone would be complaining about blood clots.
I'd say we would be in an incredibly worse position if we only had J&J and Astrazeneca in the west. In the US the pandemic is over now and we have only vaccinated about half of people with the mRNA shots. I strongly doubt we would be normal again now if we had not had those.
China's Covid vaccine is far less effective than the mRNA vaccines, a fact that's been recognized by its own leaders [1]. It's also less extensible--we have covered most of the parameter space conventional methods offer. A new platform allows us to target e.g. HIV anew [2].
[1]https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n969
[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/moderna-is-working-...
Also, as others have pointed out, it’s more effective.
Correct me if I’m wrong about this but it seems to be deceptive to think about it in terms of effectiveness.
60% doesn’t seem that much worse than 95%. Feels like 2/3 as good.
But if you look at it the other way around it’s 40% vs 5% which makes the gap much clearer - 8X more people getting symptoms (not sure what the data is on hospitalisation / deaths is though, probably closer)
Plus I believe mRNA vaccines should end up being cheaper in the long run.
Oh and plus you don’t feel as bad after getting them.
Either way: Damn, money well spent. This one success may have justified all the other “failures” or gains that haven’t materialized yet.
Does someone have information about the size of Moderna back then? TFA says they had 144 patents, so I guess they were already pretty big?