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DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Develop mRNA Therapeutics (2013)
- vmception 5y ago> 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
- FredPret 5y agoThese folks invented the internet!
- carom 5y agoEnjoy! https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/opportunities https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/opportunities
- app4soft 5y ago> COMPUTATIONAL CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING (CCU) This![0] [0] https://beta.sam.gov/opp/a6d0788057414e2c8fd6bdf45e3fd21d/view https://beta.sam.gov/opp/a6d0788057414e2c8fd6bdf45e3fd21d/vi... [PDF¹] https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/CCUProposersDayFAQ%20v15.pdf https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/CCUProposersDayFAQ%20v15.p... [PDF²] https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/CCUProposersDayBriefv7.pdf https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/CCUProposersDayBriefv7.pdf [PDF³] https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/HR001121S0024-Amendment-01.pdf https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/HR001121S0024-Amendment-01...
- systemvoltage 5y agoHas anyone here gone through this process? What is it like compared to YC?
- app4soft 5y agoCrazy ideas has more chances to be selcted by DARPA rather than YC.
- maliker 5y agoI've received an ARPA-E award. So a similar process and competition level. First you submit a 5 page concept paper, and if that's acceptable you write a 20 page full proposal (answering the Heielmeier Catechism in detail[0]). If you're selected (around 1-5% acceptance rates) you go through a contracting process--overall it takes about 1 year from initial concept paper to final contract. Once everything's signed you're executing on a 2-3 year and $1-5 million project where you have to hit technical milestones each quarter. And if you're in the top 10% of projects that were funded by the agency that year you can except follow-on funding at about the same level. [0] https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism
- rasz 5y agoDARPA also funded HackRF development, afaik still cheapest SDR with TX capability.
- tooltalk 5y agoWhy 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.
- subsubzero 5y agoI 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-11612222129 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-operation-warp-speed-worked...
- tooltalk 5y agoI 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.
- bryanlarsen 5y agoPfizer was the first vaccine approved and wasn't part of Warp Speed.
- refurb 5y ago” 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed
- Egidius 5y agoThis is why tax avoidance is a bad thing. Governments can accelerate innovation with stimulations like this.
- markkanof 5y agoLooks like DARPA's budget is about 3.5 billion a year vs. the overall defense budget of something like 715 billion. I'm betting that a lot more people would feel ok about paying taxes if more of it was going towards these types of projects rather than empire building in far away parts of the world.
- 1cvmask 5y agoThe defense budget is in fact over 1.25 trillion dollars in real terms. We just don’t count it like most other countries. For example nuclear weapons are under the Department of Energy. https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/05/making-sense-of-the-1-25-trillion-national-security-state-budget/ https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/05/making-sense-of-the-1-... https://tomdispatch.com/hartung-and-smithberger-a-dollar-by-dollar-tour-of-the-national-security-state/ https://tomdispatch.com/hartung-and-smithberger-a-dollar-by-...
- MattGaiser 5y agoYeah, but a vast amount of healthcare is under the DoD in America while it wouldn’t be in other countries.
- gnulinux 5y agoRight, so we need both. Defund the military, make sure rich people still pay their fair amount of taxes, and use that money to invest in science, education, healthcare, education etc.
- b9a2cab5 5y agoDefunding the military has real impacts. Those free trade deals that lower the cost of goods for average people don't just magically get signed, generally U.S. military presence is also a part of the deal. More generally if the U.S. loses global hegemony then so does the dollar, and a mass exodus from the dollar as foreign reserve would cause rampant inflation as demand for dollars crashes. The geopolitical situation is more complicated than just "defund the military". You can see both the current and past administration are trying to get other countries to pay more for the U.S. presence, which is a form of slow withdrawal of U.S. power, so I think they recognize that there is a need to redirect funds, but I don't think you can just outright leave in a year.
- jti107 5y agoits kinda impressive all the technologies DARPA/DOD has funded...would be interesting to see the fail/win rate for them.
- lrem 5y agoNon-zero is all you need in this case, isn't it? :)
- jonplackett 5y agoI wonder if it’s possible to calculate a rate of return on that. How much worse off would we be now without mRNA vaccines? I doubt anyone would be complaining about blood clots.
- shigawire 5y agoSeems like China did fine with more conventional vaccine technologies. I'm glad we have another tool in the toolbox, but I am missing why the mRNA vaccine tech was necessary for COVID.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> China did fine with more conventional vaccine technologies China's Covid vaccine is far less effective than the mRNA vaccines, a fact that's been recognized by its own leaders [1]. It's also less extensible--we have covered most of the parameter space conventional methods offer. A new platform allows us to target e.g. HIV anew [2]. [1]https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n969 https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n969 [2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/moderna-is-working-on-an-hiv-vaccine-after-its-covid-19-success/ar-BB1cFaWK https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/moderna-is-working-...
- ls612 5y agoThe chinese vaccines are mostly inactivated coronavirus vaccines and are only 50-60% effective. We are seeing countries which relied heavily on them such as Chile and the Seychelles having large and sustained outbreaks because they aren't effective enough to stop the spread. They probably do fairly well against mortality though. I'd say we would be in an incredibly worse position if we only had J&J and Astrazeneca in the west. In the US the pandemic is over now and we have only vaccinated about half of people with the mRNA shots. I strongly doubt we would be normal again now if we had not had those.
- jonplackett 5y agoWell that was money well spent!
- scotty79 5y agoI wonder what's the story behind BioNTech/Pfizer They created equivalent vaccine.
- mytailorisrich 5y agoI 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.
- jonplackett 5y agoBoth 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-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-...
- eliaspro 5y agoIt 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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Hoerr https://www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/curevac-gruender-und-mrna-pionier-ingmar-hoerr-im-nzz-interview-ld.1602797 https://www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/curevac-gruender-und-mrna-pion...
- 3327 5y agoMilitary saves us as usual
- mempko 5y agoA big myth often told in the tech world that things are developed by startups using private equity. We often forget the large and dynamic public sector. Biggest "VC" in the world is DARPA and other US government entities. EDIT: I meant to say, it's a big myth the tech industry tells the public.
- ardit33 5y agoIt is not a myth, but well known. Startups take something that is already researched, and further develop it and commercialize/monetize it. I think the myth might be more in the layman/general population, but most people in the tech world know this.
- mempko 5y agoYes! I guess I should be more precise thanks. It's a myth the tech world propagates to the general public. Updated my original comment.
- refurb 5y agoYou have numbers for the govt being the biggest? I mean, for biotech, total VC funding is larger than the entire NIH budget.
- spamizbad 5y agoOne of the best $25,000,000 we've ever spent.
- phh 5y agoThat's definitely pretty cool, and I really wish that European's funding had a track record anywhere close to DARPA (though I don't really complain, Europe funding isn't too bad) Does someone have information about the size of Moderna back then? TFA says they had 144 patents, so I guess they were already pretty big?
- ElDji 5y agoSo why are we paying 10 times the production price since this product has been payed by public funds ?
- madcows 5y agoProbably better if the money isn't that tainted...
- mempko 5y agoRead, Debt the First 5000 years by David Graeber. Which outlines what markets are really about. Markets are a tool for the government to provision itself. The government creates markets. The myth that markets were created because barter was annoying is plain wrong.
- gregshap 5y agoGrants encourage early R&D, Purchasing Commitments encourage Product Development and Capital Investments. We can do more of both.
- solarkraft 5y agoDARPA is an impressive VC. Could it make sense to apply their approach to other areas?
- davesque 5y agoIt's a grant though. I assume no strings attached like a VC.
- solarkraft 5y agoGood point, it’s a very abstract comparison. Could it make sense for them to receive equity in return? I suppose it would lead to preference of own companies versus others that may be ahead even without a grant. Either way: Damn, money well spent. This one success may have justified all the other “failures” or gains that haven’t materialized yet.
- justinzollars 5y agoWell that 25M really paid off. Huge.
- InTheArena 5y agoTHE 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.