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by mytailorisrich 1844 days ago
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.
1 comments
jonplackett 1844 days ago
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-...

link
eliaspro 1843 days ago
It actually goes back even further to Ingmar Hoerr (who went on to found CureVac, producing now a temperature stable SARS-COV2 vaccine) who accidentally discovered that RNA can be stabilized using liposomes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Hoerr

https://www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/curevac-gruender-und-mrna-pion...

link