Moderna, Inc. (/məˈdɜːrnə/ mə-DUR-nə)[4] is an American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that focuses on RNA therapeutics, primarily mRNA vaccines.

These vaccines use a copy of a molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA) to carry instructions for proteins to produce an immune response.

The company's pipeline also includes a cell therapy-based treatment: a relaxin fusion protein being developed to treat acute decompensated heart failure.

[1][failed verification] Moderna was founded in 2010 by Derrick Rossi, Timothy A. Springer, Kenneth R. Chien, Robert S. Langer, and Noubar Afeyan.

Moderna was also awarded a $25,000,000 grant by DARPA through a program Autonomous Diagnostics to Enable Prevention and Therapeutics: Prophylactic Options to Environmental and Contagious Threats (ADEPT-PROTECT).

[12] On January 14, 2014, Moderna announced the creation of its first venture, Onkaido Therapeutics, to focus "exclusively on developing mRNA-based oncology treatments.

[39] In February 2023, the company agreed to pay $400 million to the National Institutes of Health, Dartmouth College, and Scripps Research to settle a dispute over the rights to a chemical technique that was used in the vaccine.

According to the complaint, Moderna's use of lipid nanoparticles—crucial for delivering fragile mRNA into the human body—violates several GSK patents covering similar delivery innovations.

[44] This lawsuit follows a similar legal action GSK brought against Pfizer and BioNTech earlier in 2024, claiming patent infringement over their mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine.