Moderna, one of the major pharmaceutical corporations that produces COVID-19 vaccines, has pioneered a new mRNA injection designed to treat heart failure, CEO Stephane Bancel says.
According to Bancel, the corporation is working on a new program that involves mRNA being injected directly into people’s hearts after they’ve experienced a cardiac event.
The injection is supposedly designed to allow new blood vessels to grow and “revascularize” the heart.
“We are now in a super exciting program where we inject mRNA in people’s heart after a heart attack to grow back new blood vessels and revascularize the heart,” Bancel said during a recent interview with Australian media outlet Sky News.
“First patients have been dosed in a Phase 1B trial of our heart failure treatment candidate, mRNA-0184. This first-in-human Phase 1B clinical trial is being conducted in patients with stable heart failure to evaluate its safety and tolerability, and to assess the pharmacokinetic (PK) profile and pharmacodynamic (PD) effects of a range of dose levels and dose intervals of mRNA-0184,” Moderna says on their website.
“mRNA-0184 encodes for relaxin, a naturally occurring hormone that is known to cause hemodynamic changes that are potentially beneficial for heart failure patients,” Moderna states.
“The mRNA sequence of mRNA-0184 is engineered to instruct the body to produce relaxin with an extended half-life, with the goal of producing a sustained clinical benefit in heart failure patients – this longer half-life may result in more durable effects compared to previous approaches.”
Moderna boasts additional mRNA programs aimed to treat seasonal influenza, Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), Cytomegalovirus (CMV), cancer, cystic fibrosis, and other ailments.
Following the company’s runaway success, Moderna now also plans to raise the price of their COVID-19 mRNA injections to between $110 and $130, shifting from government contracting to commercial distribution to compete with Pfizer, reports say.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Moderna had been unable to bring a single drug to market.
This news and commentary by Andrew White originally appeared on Valiant News.
