US-based messenger RNA therapeutics developer Moderna Therapeutics announced $474m in equity financing today that included a $140m investment by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca last month.
Moderna did not disclose any precise investors in the round, describing them as “existing institutional investors and world-class strategic pharmaceutical partners as well as…new institutional investors from the United States, Europe and Asia”.
However, a regulatory filing on indicates Moderna had closed $451m for the round as of August 24, and had begun raising the money just before it announced AstraZeneca’s investment, which boosted the firm’s stake in Moderna to 9%.
Moderna’s RNA technology is being used to develop in vivo drugs that would produce proteins, antibodies and new protein constructs inside the cells of patients to treat currently undruggable conditions.
The funding was raised as Moderna received an $8m grant from the US government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (Barda) to support development of a vaccine for Zika, the virus estimated to have infected 1.5 million people in Brazil.
The Barda grant could potentially reach $125m in size and would be used to support phase 2 and 3 clinical studies and large-scale manufacturing.
Moderna now has $1.4bn in cash on its balance sheet and plans to invest up to $100m a year in development of its mRNA technology platform. It will also look to advance various drug candidates into clinical testing and explore new therapeutic areas and modalities.
The round took Moderna’s total equity funding to approximately $1.12bn, and comes after a $450m round featuring pharmaceutical firm Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Viking Global Investors, Invus, RA Capital Management and Wellington Management in January 2015 that valued it at $3bn.
The company had previously raised $200m across three rounds from investors including Alexion and venture capital firm Flagship Ventures.