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DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Develop mRNA Therapeutics (2013)

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Re: DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Develop mRNA Therapeutics (2013)

#51

Post by tooltalk »

vmception wrote: post #3

> Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) > 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

Why is this "amazing"? My understanding is that DARPA is just one of many investors and customers who approached Moderna to develope medicine for different uses. The company had raised $2B by the time they went IPO in 2018. It doesn't seem like DARPA funding had much to do with their COVID development, in the same way that Trump's Warp Speed didn't necessarily play a groundbreaking role in the vaccine development. In Pfizer's case, they refused any gov't funding, but only agreed to the gov't's guaranteed sales if their vaccined got approved.

Re: DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Develop mRNA Therapeutics (2013)

#52

Post by subsubzero »

tooltalk wrote: post #51
vmception wrote: post #3

> Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) > 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

Why is this "amazing"? My understanding is that DARPA is just one of many investors and customers who approached Moderna to develope medicine for different uses. The company had raised $2B by the time they went IPO in 2018. It doesn't seem like DARPA funding had much to do with their COVID development, in the same way that Trump's Warp Speed didn't necessarily play a groundbreaking role in the vaccine development. In…

I have to totally disagree with this statement:

> 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...

Re: DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Develop mRNA Therapeutics (2013)

#54

Post by elefanten »

adventured wrote: post #48
scotty79 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There wasn't a WWIII just because some russian dude once thought "eh, maybe it's just a glitch". USA can't take credit for preventing WWIII when it was one russian guy's single decision away from becoming exacltly half of the WWIII.

Yes, the US can still take a lot of credit. 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 a…

This is a great explanation of decades of work in conflict studies, IR and political science. This viewpoint seems almost unnaturally misunderstood on HN. The presumptive view of American military power around here seems to be some variant of these "empire" claims, with a logic that implies US hegemony is no better than any other state of the world.

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.

Re: DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Develop mRNA Therapeutics (2013)

#55

Post by tooltalk »

subsubzero wrote: post #52
tooltalk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this "amazing"? My understanding is that DARPA is just one of many investors and customers who approached Moderna to develope medicine for different uses. The company had raised $2B by the time they went IPO in 2018. It doesn't seem like DARPA funding had much to do with their COVID development, in the same way that Trump's Warp Speed didn't necessarily play a groundbreaking role in the vaccine development. In…

I have to totally disagree with this statement: > 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-…

I can't read the full article (paywall), but my understanding is that COVID vaccine developements were well underway by the time it was announced and the OWS had mostly to do with speeding up approval process, production, distribution and guaranting sales. Not saying it's not important, but I think DARPA's Moderna funding in 2012 is overplayed here.

Re: DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Develop mRNA Therapeutics (2013)

#56

Post by InTheArena »

THE US government at 66 million pounds was also the single biggest investor in research that led to the Astra-Zeneca/Oxford vaccine as well.

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.

Re: DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Develop mRNA Therapeutics (2013)

#57

Post by jonplackett »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #46
scotty79 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what's the story behind BioNTech/Pfizer They created equivalent vaccine.

I see that BioNTech was founded in 2008. Moderna was founded in 2010. 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.

Both are based on the work of one scientist Katalin Karikó

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-...

Re: DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Develop mRNA Therapeutics (2013)

#58

Post by bryanlarsen »

subsubzero wrote: post #52
tooltalk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this "amazing"? My understanding is that DARPA is just one of many investors and customers who approached Moderna to develope medicine for different uses. The company had raised $2B by the time they went IPO in 2018. It doesn't seem like DARPA funding had much to do with their COVID development, in the same way that Trump's Warp Speed didn't necessarily play a groundbreaking role in the vaccine development. In…

I have to totally disagree with this statement: > 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-…

Pfizer was the first vaccine approved and wasn't part of Warp Speed.

Re: DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Develop mRNA Therapeutics (2013)

#59

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

subsubzero wrote: post #52
tooltalk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this "amazing"? My understanding is that DARPA is just one of many investors and customers who approached Moderna to develope medicine for different uses. The company had raised $2B by the time they went IPO in 2018. It doesn't seem like DARPA funding had much to do with their COVID development, in the same way that Trump's Warp Speed didn't necessarily play a groundbreaking role in the vaccine development. In…

I have to totally disagree with this statement: > 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-…

This is entirely untrue. Europe funded vaccine development and made pre-purchases in a similar way to the Trump program with similar results. The reason for the EU's lag in rollout had to do with bureaucratic and political factors unrelated to vaccine development.

For instance: the US banned all vaccine exports, while the EU exported tens of millions of doses.

Re: DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Develop mRNA Therapeutics (2013)

#60

Post by refurb »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #58
subsubzero wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to totally disagree with this statement: > 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-…

Pfizer was the first vaccine approved and wasn't part of Warp Speed.

” Company representatives said in November that "the company is part of Operation Warp Speed as a supplier of a potential coronavirus vaccine,"[60] and that "Pfizer is proud to be one of various vaccine manufacturers participating in Operation Warp Speed as a supplier of a potential COVID-19 vaccine."”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed

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