Moderna’s mRNA-1273 vaccine for COVID-19 is currently in Phase I development and is targeted for an aggressive commercial launch in 2021. The vaccine candidate’s peak US sales are currently estimated to reach $17.72B in 2026, meaning mRNA-1273 would account for 90–95% of Moderna’s forecast revenue. As such, mRNA-1273 could be a sales leader for COVID-19, although this is a high deviation between forecasts, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

Johanna Swanson, Product Manager at GlobalData, comments: “Moderna’s product portfolio is built around its proprietary manufacturing technology, which uses  messenger ribonucleic acid  modality for vaccine and therapeutic development. This technology is currently unproven, but can have a big impact if successful. A total of 35% of Moderna’s pipeline consists of prophylactic vaccines for infectious diseases, showing its expertise in this area. Moderna has a robust pipeline with 80% of the pipeline drugs in early stages of development. This includes 26 active drugs across the discovery, preclinical, and clinical development stages, although there are no approved drugs currently.”

Swanson continues, “Moderna’s mRNA-1273 vaccine faces heavy competition from 183 other prophylactic vaccines for COVID-19, including other Operation Warp Speed competitors: AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s AZD1222, which is currently in clinical trials in the UK; vaccine candidates from Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Pfizer; and BioNTech’s BNT162. These candidates are all receiving outside funding from Congress and the National Institutes of Health, which will accelerate their development compared to unfunded competitors.” Swanson concludes, “The logistics of producing hundreds of millions to billions of doses of a vaccine is daunting. Not only raw material for the vaccine is needed, but also manufacturing sites, including production and testing equipment, which all have to be scaled up accordingly. Moderna may experience an issue with having enough qualified workers for this up-scale production. Tough, successful vaccine candidates will receive some aid in manufacturing and distribution of a successful COVID-19 vaccine via the US national stockpile.”