这家初创公司为什么值30亿美元 它要让你的细胞可以制药
Moderna Therapeutics this week announced that it raised $450 million in what is the largest-ever single round of venture capital funding for a biotech startup. Fortune has learned that the deal valued Moderna at around $3 billion, and means that the Cambridge, Mass.-based company now has $800 million of cash in the bank (including unspent past investments).Moderna Therapeutics上周宣告，该公司早已筹措了4.5亿美元的投资，如此极大的单轮筹资额可谓生物技术类初创公司之最。《财富》得知，这笔交易将Moderna的估值确认为30亿美元左右，它也意味著，这家坐落于马萨诸塞州坎布里奇的公司目前享有8亿美元的现金储备（还包括过去投资中没有用完的部分）。
All venture capital investments in biotech are, by their nature, highly-speculative. Binary scientific risk married with quasi-capricious regulatory risk. You might presume, therefore, that Moderna had somewhat tamped down on those dangers in order to raise so much money at such a high price tag. But you’d be wrong. In fact, Moderna is further away from commercialization than are most companies worth far less, as it still does not have a single drug candidate in human clinical trials.从本质上说道，所有在生物技术领域的风险投资都极具投机色彩。其中有一半是科学上的风险，另一半则是法规上的不确定性。因此，你或许不会指出Moderna设法减少了这些风险，从而获得了如此低的估值，筹得了如此多的资金。但你拢了。
实质上，Moderna的商业化程度还不如大部分估值近高于它的公司，而且在人类临床试验方面连一项候选药物都拿不出手。So how to explain the massive fundraising success, particularly with hedge fund and mutual funds that typically don’t back such early-stage endeavors (particularly when its CEO explicitly says that an IPO is not on the horizon)?那么要如何说明该公司在筹措资金上获得的巨大成功，特别是在是还获得了一般来说并不反对这种初期公司的挂钩基金和互助基金的投资（尤其是其首席执行官甚至还具体回应，该公司会迅速展开首次公开发表IPO）？The best I can do is to say that Moderna could be the single most revolutionary drug company to be formed in at least the past decade (or at least tied with Google-backed Calico, which wants to stop cellular aging). That statement comes drenched in all of the aforementioned risk caveats, but Moderna’s ambitions dwarf those of most any other company that is trying to treat Disease X. In other words, the promise proved just too tantalizing for many folks to pass up.我能作出的最差说明是，Moderna有可能是过去最少十年中问世的唯一一家最不具革命性的制药公司，或最少是与谷歌反对的Calico平分秋色，后者目的减缓细胞老化。
我之所以作出这样的论点，是因为尽管考虑到了所有上述风险，但Moderna的野心让其他任何想化疗某种疾病的公司都相形见绌。换句话说，这一前景过分诱人，让许多人无法拒绝接受。Moderna’s core technology is designed to help people make medicines within their own cells, rather than create something in a lab which patients need to ingest or inject (i.e., the way all other biotech works). It does so by injecting messenger RNA into the body, and then that mRNA stimulates the person’s cells to create the needed therapeutic proteins. Patient, heal thyself. Equally important, Moderna claims that its mRNA design is able to evade the typical human immune response that has felled past mRNA efforts.Moderna的核心技术是协助人们在他们自己的细胞内生产药物，而不是在实验室配备用作服用或静脉注射的药物（这是所有其他生物技术公司的作法）。具体方法是，在病人体内植入信使RNA，这种信使RNA随后就不会性刺激人体细胞生产化疗所需的蛋白质。
如此一来，病人就能自己康复了。某种程度最重要的是，Moderna还声称他们设计的信使RNA会启动时少见的人体免疫反应，后者曾造成过去在信使RNA上的希望都付之东流。
Not only does this open up a massive number of therapeutic possibilities, but it also could make Moderna’s products significantly faster to test and cheaper to buy than are traditional drugs. Namely because it can use common mRNA manufacturing facilities and processes to create the mRNA that can be used for all sorts of indications, rather than having to create discrete ones for each new candidate (as is typically done today).这一点不仅使得许多疗法沦为有可能，还让Moderna的产品比传统药物的检验时间较短得多，价格低得多。因为它可以利用普通的信使RNA生产设备和流程来生产应付各种病症的信使RNA，而不是为每种疾病打算分开的生产设备（这是当下的常用作法）。For investors, all of this means that they are actually making dozens — if not hundreds — of pharma bets with a single check. Again, the platform needs to work. But, if it does, there are few limits to the number of ailments that Moderna could treat — and the company has no interest in limiting itself. It currently has 45 active programs both in-house and with strategic partners like AstraZeneca AZN 1.44% and Alexion Pharmaceuticals ALXN -2.20% , and has plans to launch plenty more (with the new money expected to get several of them into Phase II clinical trials).对投资者而言，这一切意味著他们只必须投一张支票，实质上就对制药公司作出了几十次甚至几百次投资。
此外，这个平台得运转一起才讫。但Moderna一旦以求运转，他们需要化疗的疾病完全就没容许，而该公司也有意约束自己的发展。Moderna如今有数45个活跃项目，有的是内部项目，有的则是与AstraZeneca和Alexion Pharmaceuticals等战略伙伴联合研发的，而且他们还计划上马更加多项目（在获得这些新的投资后，公司未来将会将部分项目前进到临床试验的第二阶段）。
Moderna basically silos many of these programs into their own quasi-companies, based on therapeutic area. In that way it acts a bit like an incubator, and company executives leave open the possibility that certain programs could eventually be spun out via sales or even public offerings — with Moderna serving as the core technology provider and manufacturer. In fact, certain Moderna products could theoretically complete IPOs before Moderna does.Moderna还根据化疗领域的有所不同，把许多项目转交他们自己的定公司运营。这种作法使得Moderna看上去看起来一个孵化器，而该公司的高管也不回避某些项目最后被挤压的可能性，挤压方式有可能是出售，甚至公开发表上市，而Moderna自身则作为核心技术提供商和制造商。实质上，某些产品理论上可以在Moderna之前已完成首次公开发表IPO。
Not that investors would complain, of course. They’d get a cut of all of it.当然，投资者回应可会责怪。他们都能借此获益。
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