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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Moderna Therapeutics, the pioneering company developing messenger RNA therapeutics, a revolutionary new treatment modality to enable the in vivo production of therapeutic proteins, announced today that John Reynders will join Moderna in early July as its first Chief Information Officer.
Reynders is a proven leader in the design and implementation of information systems underlying all phases of drug development, from discovery to translation, clinical operations and commercial preparedness. John has also been at the vanguard of the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts in big data analytics, cloud-based computing, and innovation networks. He joins Moderna from AstraZeneca, where he served as Vice President of R&D Information, and has held senior leadership positions over the past decade at Johnson & Johnson, Lilly, and Celera Genomics.
“We are building a company capable of driving innovation on a scale and at a pace that were unimaginable until recently, and our information systems must be able to fuel that vision,” said Stephane Bancel, founding president and CEO of Moderna. “John has long been on the forefront of the information revolution that is reshaping drug development and healthcare, and he has a strong vision for how we can design an information resource capable of propelling Moderna and the entire field of messenger RNA therapeutics well into the future.”
Reynders will lead a team at Moderna in creating an information infrastructure critical to all aspects of the company’s innovation model, including the use of genomic data in drug design; the integration and instant sharing of knowledge from a variety of preclinical and clinical settings; and the seamless interaction of a wide network of collaborators, partners, and potential spinoff companies.
“It is tremendously exciting to be involved in designing the drug company of the future at this critical moment in Moderna’s scale up, when knowledge of the potential application of messenger RNA therapeutics is exploding,” Reynders said. “For Moderna and the entire field to fully capitalize on this profound advance for patients will require a full end-to-end informatics integration of the Moderna pipeline, creating the industry’s first fully digital biotech. It will also require all of us to design new ways of working together, not just within the walls of Moderna but with a vast network of collaborators around the world. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I am proud to be a part of it.”
About Moderna Therapeutics
Moderna is pioneering messenger RNA therapeutics, an entirely new in vivo drug modality that produces human proteins or antibodies inside patient cells, which are in turn active intracellularly or secreted. This breakthrough platform addresses currently undruggable targets and offers a superior alternative to existing drug modalities for a wide range of disease conditions. Moderna has developed a broad intellectual property estate including 120 patent applications with 6,500 claims ranging from novel nucleotide chemistries to specific drug compositions. The company plans to develop and commercialize its innovative mRNA drugs initially for rare diseases and oncology while partnering drug candidates in other therapeutic areas in order to rapidly deliver this innovation to patients. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Moderna is privately held and was founded in 2010 by Flagship VentureLabs in association with leading scientists from Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Visit www.modernatx.com to learn more.
For information contact:
Dan Quinn
Feinstein Kean Healthcare
617-761-6732
dan.quinn@fkhealth.com
SOURCE Moderna Therapeutics
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