BioCentury
ARTICLE | Company News

Moderna unveils organizational changes and new candidates

September 14, 2017 10:35 PM UTC

Moderna Therapeutics Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.) said its CBO, Saqib Islam, plans to leave the company in September "to pursue other opportunities." Meanwhile, the company is undergoing organizational restructuring of its business model.

Moderna said it will focus R&D on three core areas: infectious diseases, immuno-oncology and rare liver diseases. The company will roll its four venture subsidiaries -- Valera LLC, Elpidera LLC, Onkaido LLC and Caperna LLC -- back into the parent company and will operate as one entity. Moderna said the change will enable clinical learnings to be more effectively shared across therapeutic areas and "allow tighter integration between therapeutic area discovery teams and the platform research teams." Moderna spokesperson Liz Melone told BioCentury the 2014 venture model worked well "given our stage as a then-preclinical company," but as the company has evolved and introduced therapeutics into the clinic, "the venture model isn’t optimal for us."...