US biotech company Moderna announced Monday that its Covid-19 vaccine was 94.5% effective in reducing the risk of contracting the disease.

The boss of this company, Stéphane Bancel, is French and had anticipated the pandemic.

He intends to make this vaccine the first success of biotech. 

Will the coronavirus vaccine be a French success?

If the Moderna company, which claims to have developed a vaccine that is 94.5% effective, is American, its boss is French.

Stéphane Bancel, who has headed the company for nine years, had anticipated the coronavirus pandemic and made the choice to bet on biotechnology.

It all started last January at the Davos Economic Forum.

Stéphane Bancel understands that the epidemic, for the moment confined to China, is on the way to becoming an unprecedented pandemic.

Anticipation of the global health crisis

A scenario for which the boss of Moderna has prepared his group.

Long before the coronavirus, he had imagined a similar situation and intended to simulate it as part of a project led by Moderna.  

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This is not the first time that the Marseillais had a hollow nose, he who took the head of this laboratory in 2011, a year after its creation.

At the time, biotechnology was not heavy, but he believed in the future of this sector and raised a lot of money.

In total, five billion dollars in ten years.

An aggressive and determined behavior that will appeal to the United States. 

A promising success for biotechnology

Donald Trump himself witnessed his stubbornness during a crisis meeting devoted to the coronavirus.

While his colleagues are talking about a vaccine in several years, Stéphane Bancel displays a deadline of a few months.

On Monday, Moderna claimed to have developed a vaccine that is 94.5% effective and now wants to obtain marketing authorization before the end of December in the United States. 

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If this vaccine works, it will be the first marketed by biotech.

This discipline is based on a recent technology that had never been proven before: messenger RNA.

Genetic instructions directly enter human cells, which they reprogram to make a coronavirus antigen on their own to trigger an immune system response.

Stéphane Bancel and his group are working on the creation of around ten other products using this process and the success of a vaccine against the coronavirus would ensure them a significant reputation.