這家初創公司為什么值30億美元？它要讓你的細胞可以制藥
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????Moderna Therapeutics上周宣布，該公司已經募集了4.5億美元的投資，如此巨大的單輪籌資額堪稱生物技術類初創公司之最。《財富》獲悉，這筆交易將Moderna的估值確定為30億美元左右，它也意味著，這家位于馬薩諸塞州坎布里奇的公司目前擁有8億美元的現金儲備（包括過去投資中沒有用完的部分）。 ????從本質上說，所有在生物技術領域的風險投資都頗具投機色彩。其中有一半是科學上的風險，另一半則是法規上的不確定性。因此，你也許會認為Moderna設法降低了這些風險，從而得到了如此高的估值，募得了如此多的資金。但你錯了。實際上，Moderna的商業化程度還不如大部分估值遠低于它的公司，而且在人類臨床試驗方面連一項候選藥物都拿不出手。 ????那么要如何解釋該公司在募集資金上取得的巨大成功，尤其是還得到了通常并不支持這種初期公司的避險基金和互惠基金的注資（特別是其首席執行官甚至還明確表示，該公司不會很快進行首次公開募股）？ ????我能做出的最好解釋是，Moderna可能是過去至少十年中誕生的唯一一家最具革命性的制藥公司，或至少是與谷歌支持的Calico平分秋色，后者旨在延緩細胞老化。我之所以做出這樣的論斷，是因為盡管考慮到了所有上述風險，但Moderna的野心讓其他任何想要治療某種疾病的公司都相形見絀。換句話說，這一前景過于誘人，讓許多人難以拒絕。 ????Moderna的核心技術是幫助人們在他們自己的細胞內制造藥物，而不是在實驗室配置用于服用或注射的藥物（這是所有其他生物技術公司的做法）。具體方法是，在病人體內植入信使RNA，這種信使RNA隨后就會刺激人體細胞制造治療所需的蛋白質。如此一來，病人就能自己痊愈了。同樣重要的是，Moderna還宣稱他們設計的信使RNA不會觸發常見的人體免疫反應，后者曾導致過去在信使RNA上的努力都付之東流。 ????這一點不僅使得許多療法成為可能，還讓Moderna的產品比傳統藥物的檢驗時間短得多，價格低得多。因為它可以利用普通的信使RNA制造設備和流程來生產應對各種病癥的信使RNA，而不是為每種疾病準備單獨的制造設備（這是當下的常用做法）。 ????對投資者而言，這一切意味著他們只需要簽一張支票，實際上就對制藥公司做出了幾十次甚至幾百次投資。此外，這個平臺得運轉起來才行。但Moderna一旦得以運轉，他們能夠治療的疾病幾乎就沒有限制，而該公司也無意約束自己的發展。Moderna如今已有45個活躍項目，有的是內部項目，有的則是與AstraZeneca和Alexion Pharmaceuticals等戰略伙伴共同研發的，而且他們還計劃上馬更多項目（在得到這些新的投資后，公司有望將部分項目推進到臨床試驗的第二階段）。 ????Moderna還根據治療領域的不同，把許多項目交給他們自己的準公司運營。這種做法使得Moderna看起來像是一個孵化器，而該公司的高管也不排除某些項目最終被剝離的可能性，剝離方式有可能是出售，甚至公開上市，而Moderna自身則作為核心技術提供商和制造商。實際上，某些產品理論上可以在Moderna之前完成首次公開募股。 ????當然，投資者對此可不會抱怨。他們都能從中受益。（財富中文網） ????譯者：嚴匡正 ????審校：任文科 |
????Moderna Therapeutics this week announced that it raised $450 million in what is the largest-ever single round of venture capital funding for a biotech startup. Fortune has learned that the deal valued Moderna at around $3 billion, and means that the Cambridge, Mass.-based company now has $800 million of cash in the bank (including unspent past investments). ????All venture capital investments in biotech are, by their nature, highly-speculative. Binary scientific risk married with quasi-capricious regulatory risk. You might presume, therefore, that Moderna had somewhat tamped down on those dangers in order to raise so much money at such a high price tag. But you’d be wrong. In fact, Moderna is further away from commercialization than are most companies worth far less, as it still does not have a single drug candidate in human clinical trials. ????So how to explain the massive fundraising success, particularly with hedge fund and mutual funds that typically don’t back such early-stage endeavors (particularly when its CEO explicitly says that an IPO is not on the horizon)? ????The best I can do is to say that Moderna could be the single most revolutionary drug company to be formed in at least the past decade (or at least tied with Google-backed Calico, which wants to stop cellular aging). That statement comes drenched in all of the aforementioned risk caveats, but Moderna’s ambitions dwarf those of most any other company that is trying to treat Disease X. In other words, the promise proved just too tantalizing for many folks to pass up. ????Moderna’s core technology is designed to help people make medicines within their own cells, rather than create something in a lab which patients need to ingest or inject (i.e., the way all other biotech works). It does so by injecting messenger RNA into the body, and then that mRNA stimulates the person’s cells to create the needed therapeutic proteins. Patient, heal thyself. Equally important, Moderna claims that its mRNA design is able to evade the typical human immune response that has felled past mRNA efforts. ????Not only does this open up a massive number of therapeutic possibilities, but it also could make Moderna’s products significantly faster to test and cheaper to buy than are traditional drugs. Namely because it can use common mRNA manufacturing facilities and processes to create the mRNA that can be used for all sorts of indications, rather than having to create discrete ones for each new candidate (as is typically done today). ????For investors, all of this means that they are actually making dozens — if not hundreds — of pharma bets with a single check. Again, the platform needs to work. But, if it does, there are few limits to the number of ailments that Moderna could treat — and the company has no interest in limiting itself. It currently has 45 active programs both in-house and with strategic partners like AstraZeneca AZN 1.44% and Alexion Pharmaceuticals ALXN -2.20% , and has plans to launch plenty more (with the new money expected to get several of them into Phase II clinical trials). ????Moderna basically silos many of these programs into their own quasi-companies, based on therapeutic area. In that way it acts a bit like an incubator, and company executives leave open the possibility that certain programs could eventually be spun out via sales or even public offerings — with Moderna serving as the core technology provider and manufacturer. In fact, certain Moderna products could theoretically complete IPOs before Moderna does. ????Not that investors would complain, of course. They’d get a cut of all of it. |
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