What You Should Know:
– Moderna, Inc., a biotechnology company pioneering a new
class of messenger RNA (mRNA) medicines, has selected Amazon Web Services
(AWS) as its preferred cloud provider, as well as its standard for
analytics and machine learning workloads.
– By building and scaling its operations on AWS, Moderna
is able to quickly design research experiments and uncover new insights,
automate its laboratory and manufacturing processes to enhance its drug
discovery pipeline, and more easily comply with applicable laws and regulations
during production and testing of vaccine and therapeutic candidates.
– Leveraging its mRNA platform and manufacturing facility
with the AWS-powered research engine, Moderna delivered the first clinical
batch of its vaccine candidate (mRNA-1273) against COVID-19 to the NIH for the Phase
1 trial 42 days after the initial sequencing of the virus.
Amazon Web Services, Inc.
(AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced that Moderna, Inc., a biotechnology company
pioneering a new class of messenger RNA (mRNA) medicines, has selected AWS as
its preferred cloud provider, as well as its standard for analytics and machine
learning workloads. Leveraging its mRNA platform and manufacturing facility
with the AWS-powered research engine, Moderna delivered the first clinical
batch of its vaccine candidate (mRNA-1273) against COVID-19 to the
NIH for the Phase 1 trial 42 days after the initial sequencing of the virus.
By building and scaling its operations on the world’s
leading cloud, Moderna is able to quickly design research experiments and
uncover new insights, automate its laboratory and manufacturing processes to enhance
its drug discovery pipeline, and more easily comply with applicable laws and
regulations during production and testing of vaccine and therapeutic
candidates.
Accelerating Development of Messenger RNA Medicines to Prevent
and Fight Diseases
Researching and developing new drugs can be complex and
expensive. Scientists have to conduct years of basic research to understand how
new diseases act at a molecular level in the human body and need to screen
thousands of different molecular compounds (the basis for many drugs) to assess
their safety and efficacy as potential treatments. After they narrow down the
pipeline, researchers perform multiple rounds of testing in the laboratory
before advancing the most promising drug candidates for further study.
In addition, because the manufacturing requirements for
these drugs can be highly variable, pharmaceutical companies may also need to
build expensive new infrastructure or redesign existing facilities in order to
produce them. Moderna is managing these challenges, leveraging the breadth and
depth of AWS services to simplify the research and manufacture of a
new class of drugs, based on mRNA, to treat a wide range of diseases.
AWS/Moderna Integration Benefits
Moderna has invented proprietary technologies and methods
that run on AWS to create mRNA constructs that cells recognize as if
they were produced in the body. This invention has empowered Moderna to
experiment rapidly on virtually any mRNA sequence, easily shifting between
research priorities, without investing in new technology. Moderna runs its Drug
Design Studio on AWS’s highly scalable compute and storage infrastructure
to quickly design mRNA sequences for protein targets.
It then uses analytics and machine learning to optimize
those sequences for production so that the company’s automated manufacturing
platform can successfully convert them into physical mRNA for testing. In
addition, by leveraging Amazon Redshift – AWS’s fully managed data
warehousing service – Moderna’s scientists and engineers aggregate results from
dozens of experiments that are running in parallel and can easily query and
share insights to refine their design and production cycle quickly.
Moderna runs all of its SAP S/4HANA workloads on AWS,
including manufacturing, accounting, and inventory management, which enables
the company to achieve greater efficiency and visibility across its
operations. AWS also powers Moderna’s highly automated production
facility, which runs AWS IoT services to connect the manufacturing
instruments, robotics, and other critical systems that quickly deliver the mRNA
constructs for experimentation.
Integrating its systems on AWS provides Moderna
with the ability to trace its manufacturing process, facilitating industry best
practices in its supply chain, manufacturing, and quality control processes.
Moderna also used AWS to essentially copy and paste its digital
manufacturing model onto its partner’s facilities for technology transfer,
giving Moderna rapid access to the additional production capacity it needs to
address global demand.
“The science behind mRNA medicines is advancing at a rapid pace, and building Moderna’s technology platform on AWS gives our scientists the insights, agility, and security they need to continue to lead in the industry,” said Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s Chief Executive Officer. “With AWS, our researchers have the ability to quickly design and execute research experiments and rapidly uncover new insights to get potentially life-saving treatments into production faster. AWS’s breadth and depth of services are supporting our mission to create a new generation of medicines for patients and are instrumental in our quest to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 and other life-threatening diseases.”
