HLTH_Shannon Klinger: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Saul Marquez:
Hey everybody! Saul Marquez with the HLTH Matters podcast, recorded straight at the HLTH conference, this year in Las Vegas, Nevada. Thanks for joining me again, and for those that haven’t, welcome, please hit the subscribe button. We’re interviewing some amazing health leaders, you’re not going to want to miss any of these, you will leave inspired with some great ideas. Today, I have the privilege of hosting Shannon Klinger. She is the chief legal officer and corporate secretary at Moderna’s Legal Governance and Corporate Compliance Efforts. Miss Klinger joined Moderna from Novartis, where she served as Chief Legal Officer and a member of the Novartis Executive Committee since 2018. Previously, she served as the Chief Ethics and Risk Compliance Officer. During her tenure at Novartis, she held other roles of increasing responsibility, including Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer and Global Head of Litigation, General Counsel, and Global Head of Legal at Sandoz, a Novartis division. I’m excited to have her here on the podcast today and want to welcome her to discuss the efforts that they’re up to and how they’re improving the way that we deliver healthcare, increase equity, techquity. Thank you for joining us, Shannon.
Shannon Klinger:
Thank you, it’s great to be here.
Saul Marquez:
So there is an incredible amount of work being done in health equity and really making sure that care is being delivered in the best way possible from every segment of healthcare. You’re here representing Moderna, and it’s such a pleasure to be here with you. Before we dive into the things we’re going to talk about, Shannon, I’d love to hear more about your story. What inspires your work in healthcare?
Shannon Klinger:
So I have the privilege of being the Chief Legal Officer for Moderna as well as the president of the Moderna Charitable Foundation. I started my career as a lawyer in private practice, and I came in-house into companies because I experienced Alzheimer’s through my grandmother, and I saw the devastating impact that disease can have on families. And for me, I wanted to be part of a solution in making life better for patients.
Saul Marquez:
I think that’s so great, and it’s that personal story that drives us all. For you it’s your grandmother, for me, it was my grandfather. He had a massive stroke and suffered a lot and it’s been an inspiring thing for me. So let’s dive into the work that you do. How are you and the business, Moderna, adding value to the healthcare ecosystem?
Shannon Klinger:
Yeah, so as you may know, Moderna is a platform technology company, probably well-known by many of your listeners as a company who played a significant role in helping to solve the challenges of the pandemic. But Moderna isn’t just a company that’s a year and a half old, Moderna has been around for ten years with a deep focus in infectious diseases, and a commitment to mRNA and what it believed the power of mRNA could have to create transformative therapies for patients. And COVID for us is just the first step in that journey.
Saul Marquez:
Well, I love that, Shannon, and it was certainly nice, honestly miraculous, actually, to have been through the pandemic and had the options of several vaccines, Moderna being one of them. Never in the history of our world have we been able to turn around a vaccine that fast. So first and foremost, an acknowledgment for what you just mentioned, and secondly, just an enormous amount of gratitude for the work that you and the team have done.
Shannon Klinger:
Thank you very much.
Saul Marquez:
Let’s dive into some of the role of technology. So what do you think technology’s role in driving more equitable access to healthcare is?
Shannon Klinger:
Yes, so I’ll start with the fundamental premise of our company. Messenger RNA is itself a platform technology. We believe this technology, as the backbone of all of our innovation, will allow us to democratize healthcare in a way that our industry has not seen before, because every time we go after a different therapeutic indication, a different virus, a different challenge, we’re not recreating the platform technology, that is what Moderna is all about. We’re making tweaks to the protein. How do we stimulate your own body to fight whatever the disease is that we’re targeting? And that’s why when we look at our portfolio, we have everything from respiratory vaccines to vaccines for latent viruses like Epstein-Barr virus, which has recently been linked to the incidence of multiple sclerosis. We’ve got in our pipeline a personalized cancer vaccine. What if this platform technology of mRNA could actually help prolong and save lives for those suffering from cancer?
Saul Marquez:
That is a big “What if?” that gets me really excited and I’m sure listeners, you’re probably feeling that too. And think it’s worth Shannon, for the sake of level setting, the history, let’s talk about what was before and what is today? If you don’t mind, I think it would be worth doing that to distinguish the platform that Moderna is. Historically vaccines, how have they been created, and the way you guys did it this time around, it’s unique. So people understand.
Shannon Klinger:
Great question. So if we just take the flu vaccine, as a great example of what we’re talking about, historically, the WHO, or the World Health Organization, would come out in March-April timeframe with what they call a strain selection, that would be what do we think are going to be the most prevalent strains of flu that are going to impact the world population in the fall, and they’d send that out to vaccine manufacturers who would work from a protein-based perspective in an egg construct. And they’d have to start all the way back in April because it takes a long time to create a vaccine when you’re creating a vaccine based on that construct. And our messenger RNA, we’ve proven, if you look at the BIVALENT vaccine that we’ve launched this fall, that in about 60 days we can go from the identification of a new variant like ba4/ba5 to a vaccine on the market that’s addressing that very variant. And I think that’s the difference, is speed to market, speed to patient, and ultimately impact on human health.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. That is exactly the difference, and I appreciate you walking us through that because it’s the speed at which we could get these vaccines to people that helps adoption, that helps us get the right fix for the right problem in a way that we need, and so thank you for walking us through that. Now, you also mentioned that you are the chair of the Charitable Foundation at Moderna. Would love to learn more about that. What are you guys doing? What’s the mission?
Shannon Klinger:
So excited to talk about that. One of the things that I loved when I joined Moderna is how passionate our board and our executive team are about giving back. In fact, six months after our first commercial sale, the Moderna board decided to create the Moderna Charitable Foundation and funded it with an initial endowment of 50 million USD.
Saul Marquez:
Amazing.
Shannon Klinger:
What we’ve been focused on in our mission is, how do we address those disparities of healthcare that have been made even more pronounced through the COVID pandemic. One example, we recently announced $4 million worth of grants in sub-Saharan Africa to organizations that are focused on clinical training and workforce development, on educating about vaccines and the importance of vaccines. Again, all to drive an improvement in public health.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. And so, it started how long ago?
Shannon Klinger:
The foundation was approved by the IRS only in March of this year, if you can believe it.
Saul Marquez:
Wow, well, congratulations, that’s a huge milestone, the most recent endowment to Africa. What’s on the horizon?
Shannon Klinger:
We’re continuing to look at areas where Moderna can have the most impact in the communities where we live and work. And so we have so many inbounds from so many different organizations, all of whom are able to demonstrate these disparities of healthcare. And so we’re going to continue to lean in, trying to make as much of a difference as we can from the Moderna perspective.
Saul Marquez:
That’s wonderful, thank you for sharing that. So Moderna’s Global Public Health Strategy, many people may not be familiar with it. Would love to dive into that for a second with you, Shannon.
Shannon Klinger:
If we take a step back, in one sentence, we want to protect as many people around the world as possible, and we’ve manifested that strategy in 3 or 4 ways over the last 12 months, and we’re not done yet. But if we look at what we’re doing, for example, Moderna has had an unwavering commitment to vaccine equity in low and low-middle-income countries. At one point, we had committed the most doses to GAVI for supply to low and low-middle-income countries as well as to the African Union, and while we’ve recently announced that we’ve unwound that deal because there’s a lack of demand, we also have partnered with them to commit 100 million doses in 2023 of our most updated variant vaccine to make sure we’re part of the solution and equitable access for vaccines in low-middle-income countries. We also announced last year that we’re building a manufacturing facility in Kenya. We believe it’s so important to have our technology on the ground in those continents where we can make the biggest difference. We talked about the platform and the speed to market. One of the things that we can do is launch simultaneously, subject to regulatory approval, a vaccine or a therapeutic in the US, in Europe, and in Africa. That’s never happened in the history of our industry before. And when we look at our pipeline with things like TB, malaria, dengue, three phase-one trials in HIV, again, coming back to that question of “What if?”. If these were, what if we could actually launch a vaccine against HIV simultaneously around the world? We also have started a program called mRNA Access, and it’s another thing that’s really important to us. We believe in the power of our platform to solve the world’s most pressing public health challenges, but we also know we can’t do it all by ourselves. And so we’re partnering with researchers and universities all around the world to give them access to our platform, access to some of our researchers and scientific advice, because maybe they’ve got an even better idea as to how we can solve some of these public health challenges, and we want to be part of their solution and bring them into our ecosystem as well.
Saul Marquez:
Shannon, thank you for that. And for those of you listening to this thinking, wow, this is amazing, how can I get involved or how can I partner? Shannon, maybe you could share with us some resources, you know, places people could go and explore this.
Shannon Klinger:
Absolutely, go to modernatx.com and you’ll find an Access tab on our website, and that Access tab will take you to information about mRNA access as well as links about how to reach out, get more information, get involved. There’s also a link on the Charitable Foundation, so if any of those of you who are listening would like to get involved with us on funding opportunities, you can click there, learn more, and actually put your application in online. Again, together we can make an incredible difference in public health.
Saul Marquez:
Shannon, I want to thank you so much and also Moderna for taking part of this podcast series. Folks, just as a reminder, you can find all of the points that we’ve discussed, as well as links to our podcast in the show notes. So make sure you take a look there, click, and take action. Shannon, thanks so much for being with us today.
Shannon Klinger:
Thank you so much for having me.
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