So mutig sind die wenigsten Manager. Mit der Krebsimpfung will Stéphane Bancel den nächsten Jackpot knacken

Fifteen years ago, Stéphane Bancel invested his money in the small biotech company Moderna. The pandemic made the company rich thanks to its mRNA vaccine. Now, Bancel aims to strike again with a cancer vaccine. One thing is clear about Stéphane Bancel: the Moderna CEO has an enormous perseverance to persevere. How strong this trait makes him and how daring he is, the 54-year-old Frenchman demonstrated again with the development of a potential cancer vaccine.

NZZ.ch requires JavaScript for essential functions. Your browser or ad-blocker is currently preventing this. The successful outcome of a phase 3 clinical study marks the crowning achievement of ten years of work, he explained this week on the social networking site Linkedin. The study involves patients with skin cancer. The news sent Moderna's stock price soaring nearly 180 percent on Wednesday.

Behind it lies the hope that Moderna will once again succeed in building a billion-dollar business using mRNA technology. Bancel started Moderna in 2011 with just $2 million in capital and 20 employees. Most of the money came from Bancel's personal wealth, which he had previously amassed as a manager at the French diagnostic company Biomérieux and the American pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.

Even then, Bancel was convinced of the huge potential of mRNA technology. However, he and his team faced numerous setbacks. His wife questioned whether he suffered from bipolar disorder, as he would be overjoyed one day and completely depressed the next, he said in an interview with the newspaper "Blick" in 2021. All those efforts were forgotten by the end of 2020 when Moderna launched a coronavirus vaccine.

Bancel had so much to do in the first year of the pandemic that he couldn't spare a single day. Then he suddenly found himself in a billion-dollar company. Moderna earned more than $20 billion in profits in 2021 and 2022 thanks to the vaccine. Since then, however, the business has collapsed. In the last two and a half years, Moderna has incurred losses of over $10 billion.

However, the cancer vaccine could again bring the company a lot of money. But it remains to be seen how well it actually works. And who will pay for the expensive treatments? Analysts are talking about the vaccine costing $400,000 alone. The costs for physicians and hospitals are not included in this figure. A new combination therapy with an mRNA vaccine can delay the relapse of the tumor or metastases.

That's good. But calling it a day for the good of humanity is nonsense and harmful. The promising data from pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Merck give patients and investors hope. However, there are still hurdles to widespread use of the technology. Initially, it was just a lucky finding after COVID-19 vaccinations. Then there were laboratory data from animal studies. How mRNA vaccines are conquering the fight against tumors.