[HN Gopher] DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Devel...
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DARPA Awards Moderna a Grant for Up to $25M to Develop mRNA
Therapeutics (2013)
Author : 1915cb1f
Score : 231 points
Date : 2021-06-01 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (investors.modernatx.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (investors.modernatx.com)
| jonplackett wrote:
| Well that was money well spent!
| scotty79 wrote:
| I wonder what's the story behind BioNTech/Pfizer
|
| They created equivalent vaccine.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I see that BioNTech was founded in 2008. Moderna was founded
| in 2010.
|
| I guess that like many advances, mRNA was (and still is) a
| new, promising technology that prompted people to found
| companies to bring it to the market. Moderna, as an American
| company, probably simply went to see DARPA when they were
| looking for funding because of the potential of the
| technology.
| justinzollars wrote:
| Well that 25M really paid off. Huge.
| mempko wrote:
| A big myth often told in the tech world that things are developed
| by startups using private equity. We often forget the large and
| dynamic public sector. Biggest "VC" in the world is DARPA and
| other US government entities.
|
| EDIT: I meant to say, it's a big myth the tech industry tells the
| public.
| ardit33 wrote:
| It is not a myth, but well known. Startups take something that
| is already researched, and further develop it and
| commercialize/monetize it.
|
| I think the myth might be more in the layman/general
| population, but most people in the tech world know this.
| mempko wrote:
| Yes! I guess I should be more precise thanks. It's a myth the
| tech world propagates to the general public. Updated my
| original comment.
| 3327 wrote:
| Military saves us as usual
| vmception wrote:
| > _Defense_ Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
|
| > make antibody-producing drugs to protect against a wide range
| of known and unknown emerging infectious diseases _and engineered
| biological threats_
|
| This is amazing. I need to follow their other grants now to see
| what they're looking at
| rasz wrote:
| DARPA also funded HackRF development, afaik still cheapest SDR
| with TX capability.
| tooltalk wrote:
| Why is this "amazing"? My understanding is that DARPA is just
| one of many investors and customers who approached Moderna to
| develope medicine for different uses. The company had raised
| $2B by the time they went IPO in 2018. It doesn't seem like
| DARPA funding had much to do with their COVID development, in
| the same way that Trump's Warp Speed didn't necessarily play a
| groundbreaking role in the vaccine development. In Pfizer's
| case, they refused any gov't funding, but only agreed to the
| gov't's guaranteed sales if their vaccined got approved.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I have to totally disagree with this statement:
|
| > in the same way that Trump's Warp Speed didn't necessarily
| play a groundbreaking role in the vaccine development
|
| Operation warp speed, despite its Trump affiliation was
| extremely successful, If it hadn't been in place the US would
| have been similar to Canada or Europe in terms of Vaccine
| rollout. Here's an article about OWS:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-operation-warp-speed-
| worked...
| tooltalk wrote:
| I can't read the full article (paywall), but my
| understanding is that COVID vaccine developements were well
| underway by the time it was announced and it had mostly to
| do with speeding up approval process, production,
| distribution and guaranting sales.
| FredPret wrote:
| These folks invented the internet!
| alert0 wrote:
| Enjoy!
|
| https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/opportunities
| app4soft wrote:
| > _COMPUTATIONAL CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING (CCU)_
|
| This![0]
|
| [0] https://beta.sam.gov/opp/a6d0788057414e2c8fd6bdf45e3fd21d
| /vi...
|
| [PDF1] https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/CCUProposersDayFAQ%2
| 0v15.p...
|
| [PDF2]
| https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/CCUProposersDayBriefv7.pdf
|
| [PDF3] https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/HR001121S0024-Amendm
| ent-01...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Has anyone here gone through this process? What is it like
| compared to YC?
| app4soft wrote:
| Crazy ideas has more chances to be selcted by DARPA rather
| than YC.
| maliker wrote:
| I've received an ARPA-E award. So a similar process and
| competition level.
|
| First you submit a 5 page concept paper, and if that's
| acceptable you write a 20 page full proposal (answering the
| Heielmeier Catechism in detail[0]). If you're selected
| (around 1-5% acceptance rates) you go through a contracting
| process--overall it takes about 1 year from initial concept
| paper to final contract.
|
| Once everything's signed you're executing on a 2-3 year and
| $1-5 million project where you have to hit technical
| milestones each quarter. And if you're in the top 10% of
| projects that were funded by the agency that year you can
| except follow-on funding at about the same level.
|
| [0] https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism
| Egidius wrote:
| This is why tax avoidance is a bad thing. Governments can
| accelerate innovation with stimulations like this.
| paxys wrote:
| $25 million went to research that produced a life-saving
| vaccine and averted (or at least abated) a global crisis.
| Meanwhile the F-35 program at a lifetime cost of $1.7
| _trillion_ has produced basically nothing.
|
| People's biggest criticism of taxation is all the government
| corruption and wastage that it enables, and IMO that is
| completely valid.
| vmception wrote:
| US government would never balance its budget even if tax
| compliance was 100% and the tax rate was 100%.
|
| The math does not check out and the taxes fund nothing except
| the interest payments on international debt.
|
| The things that were going to get funded will still get funded,
| because they are funded by the debt issuance and the continued
| market tolerance for US government debt issuances.
|
| So, no, tax avoidance has practically nothing to do with this.
| The "roads and schools [and innovations]" argument is
| particularly weak, because whatever _wasn 't_ funded was never
| going to _get_ funded. The only limit to budget allocations is
| the market tolerance of the debt and currency. So again - since
| that market tolerance is extremely vast and expansive given the
| lack of liquid alternatives - if it wasn 't funded, it wasn't
| going to get funded.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _only limit to budget allocations is the market tolerance
| of the debt and currency_
|
| Sovereign debt buyers and FX traders strongly consider a
| states' ability to collect taxes.
| vmception wrote:
| more aptly: the ability of the state to pay its interest
| now and in the future.
|
| the state is in a balance to avoid a death spiral of its
| currency: creating more because it purchases less due to
| market selloff of the currency.
|
| the main point is that it is highly leveraged and tax
| collection is merely servicing a small single digit
| percentage of the capital, and therefore the further sliver
| from tax avoidance is having even tinier percentage of an
| effect on how what the budget is and could be. the state
| also has other revenue sources.
| markkanof wrote:
| Looks like DARPA's budget is about 3.5 billion a year vs. the
| overall defense budget of something like 715 billion. I'm
| betting that a lot more people would feel ok about paying taxes
| if more of it was going towards these types of projects rather
| than empire building in far away parts of the world.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| The defense budget is in fact over 1.25 trillion dollars in
| real terms. We just don't count it like most other countries.
| For example nuclear weapons are under the Department of
| Energy.
|
| https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/05/making-sense-of-
| the-1-...
|
| https://tomdispatch.com/hartung-and-smithberger-a-dollar-
| by-...
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Yeah, but a vast amount of healthcare is under the DoD in
| America while it wouldn't be in other countries.
| gnulinux wrote:
| Right, so we need both. Defund the military, make sure rich
| people still pay their fair amount of taxes, and use that
| money to invest in science, education, healthcare, education
| etc.
| b9a2cab5 wrote:
| Defunding the military has real impacts. Those free trade
| deals that lower the cost of goods for average people don't
| just magically get signed, generally U.S. military presence
| is also a part of the deal.
|
| More generally if the U.S. loses global hegemony then so
| does the dollar, and a mass exodus from the dollar as
| foreign reserve would cause rampant inflation as demand for
| dollars crashes.
|
| The geopolitical situation is more complicated than just
| "defund the military". You can see both the current and
| past administration are trying to get other countries to
| pay more for the U.S. presence, which is a form of slow
| withdrawal of U.S. power, so I think they recognize that
| there is a need to redirect funds, but I don't think you
| can just outright leave in a year.
| demadog wrote:
| The U.S. isn't empire building. It's mainly a policy of
| retaining superpower status for world peace.
|
| Containment of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea is
| largely the defining policy of the last 70 years.
|
| Of course tons of blunders like Vietnam and Afghanistan.
| Tragedies. But there has not been a World War III nor have
| there been large scale wars killing a sizable portion of the
| populace such as most wars pre-WWII.
|
| For further evidence that the U.S. isn't interested in empire
| building is the fact that in wars over the last 70 years, the
| U.S. hasn't gained land and tried to turn the countries into
| vassal states like in classical European wars or like USSR
| did. The U.S. aims to build allies not an empire.
| vasco wrote:
| The U.S. isn't creating vassal states because that wouldn't
| fly with the current zeitgeist, because it'd allienate the
| EU and other current friendly countries which buy a lot of
| crap from US companies. Keeping the USD as the base
| currency of the world is the most important thing. When the
| a country owns the de-facto base currency it can print it's
| way into prosperity, having the most powerful army assures
| that everyone will respect that the pieces of paper you
| print are worth something.
|
| This way you can get yourself out of trouble any time it
| arrises by printing your way out of it. Inflation then
| comes and your debts are now easier to repay. Meanwhile all
| the schmuck countries holding your debt can't do much about
| it, since you're the only one that can print USD.
|
| Keeping those countries close and doing trade is way better
| than a few extra official vassal states, when you can
| instead just get most of the profits without any of the
| hassle of actually having to manage a remote piece of land.
| Why have all that trouble when you can sell your
| current_gen-2 weapon systems to most countries on earth
| with loads of profit? Plus they can't ever go to war
| against you because you'll just stop supplying them.
|
| I'm very pro-US myself but to think that this "benevolent
| world management" stance is just out of the kindness of the
| US government's heart seems a bit naive. It's subtle empire
| building, but it's still empire building. I for one don't
| mind, because I think out of the options there are, the US
| definitely isn't the worse choice.
| tarsinge wrote:
| > I for one don't mind, because I think out of the
| options there are, the US definitely isn't the worse
| choice.
|
| I'm relatively pro-US, but being from EU I for one mind
| becoming a second class citizen in the US empire without
| being consulted.
| scotty79 wrote:
| There wasn't a WWIII just because some russian dude once
| thought "eh, maybe it's just a glitch". USA can't take
| credit for preventing WWIII when it was one russian guy's
| single decision away from becoming exacltly half of the
| WWIII.
| adventured wrote:
| Yes, the US can still take a lot of credit.
|
| Just because the Soviets didn't officially screw up and
| get everyone killed (thanks to Stanislav Petrov), that
| does not detract from the stabilizing effect the US as a
| superpower has had _overall_ (yes, local wars like Iraq
| have caused local instability) in preventing massive wars
| between global powers that would inevitably kill tens of
| millions of people.
|
| The US superpower also constantly discourages smaller
| regional wars and spiral conflicts, because the parties
| involved have to play the risk that the US takes the
| opposite side and picks winners. If you're North Korea
| and you invade South Korea, you know you're going to war
| with the US. If you're Russia and you invade Lithuania,
| Poland or Romania, you're going to war with the US. If
| you're Iran and you declare war on Israel, you're going
| to war with the US. If you're Venezuela and you have a
| tense political conflict with Colombia, and you invade,
| now you're going to war with the US (directly or
| indirectly).
|
| The US umbrella shields nearly every democratic nation in
| the world, including all the young democracies in Eastern
| Europe (some need that shield a lot less than others).
| And this is where the Reddit-knowledge reactionary cynic
| jumps in and mentions the coup against Iran and how they
| were a democracy, and somehow that magically undermines
| everything else I said (they were not a democracy, that's
| factually false, their leadership was authoritarian and
| appointed, not elected; they were no more a democracy
| than modern Iran is; although the US should not have
| involved itself with Iran regardless).
|
| China routinely lobs military threats at Australia now,
| recently telling them that the Australian military will
| be the first to be targeted if they get involved in any
| conflict related to Taiwan. Australia knows that if a
| military conflict ever breaks out with China (including
| over trade), the US will be on its side. It's that
| simple. It keeps a lot of bad behavior in check (which,
| again, simultaneously does not excuse any bad behavior by
| the US; I shouldn't have to spend so much time including
| statements like that, but so many people fail at basic
| logic).
|
| There are positives and negatives to the US and what it
| does with its superpower position (people only like to
| mention the negatives, naturally), one of the positives
| has been substantial overall global stability in the post
| WW2 era versus all of the recorded history that came
| before.
| elefanten wrote:
| This is a great explanation of decades of work in
| conflict studies, IR and political science. This
| viewpoint seems almost unnaturally misunderstood on HN.
| The presumptive view of American military power around
| here seems to be some variant of these "empire" claims,
| with a logic that implies US hegemony is no better than
| any other state of the world.
|
| In the present political climate (especially among
| highly-educated segments and subcultures of society),
| it's common to be met with derision when suggesting the
| American "empire" has been incredibly restrained and
| self-effacing compared to virtually any empire in world
| history. But no, it's cool to just cite Chomsky's latest
| rhetoric and declare America as bad as the worst of them.
|
| I predict a lot of rude awakenings will occur if China
| manages to achieve primacy, and Europe will have an
| especially hard landing.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > But there has not been a World War III nor have there
| been large scale wars killing a sizable portion of the
| populace such as most wars pre-WWII.
|
| This is as much if not more of a result of Mutually Assured
| Destruction due to nuclear weapons. Humanity finally built
| something so destructive we had to collectively choose not
| to use it because the only way to win that game is not to
| play it.
|
| Now it's all proxy wars, cyber 'wars', and trade 'wars'.
|
| >For further evidence that the U.S. isn't interested in
| empire building is the fact that in wars over the last 70
| years, the U.S. hasn't gained land and tried to turn the
| countries into vassal states like in classical European
| wars or like USSR did. The U.S. aims to build allies not an
| empire.
|
| This much I agree with.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Defense is business in an abstract sense. DaaS is desirable
| for many nations instead of building domestic capability
| which would be far worse due to scale/reinventing-the-wheel.
| Look up US defense treaties with various nations across the
| world - this is a mutual agreement in exchange for IP,
| defense sales, assurance and guarantees, soft power, etc.
| hencq wrote:
| This is exactly the argument made by Mariana Mazzucato in The
| Entrepreneurial State. It argues that the state is a major
| driver of innovation. DARPA is a great example of that. It
| argues that governments should be receiving some of the returns
| that private companies make because of this innovation. E.g.
| Apple makes enormous amounts of money selling iPhones that is
| full of technology like GPS, Internet, etc. that wouldn't be
| possible without the state as a driver of innovation. It seems
| fair that they get a share of those earnings in return.
| golergka wrote:
| Tax avoidance is a moral responsibility, because violence or
| threat of violence is morally wrong regardless of the outcome.
| spamizbad wrote:
| One of the best $25,000,000 we've ever spent.
| jti107 wrote:
| its kinda impressive all the technologies DARPA/DOD has
| funded...would be interesting to see the fail/win rate for them.
| lrem wrote:
| Non-zero is all you need in this case, isn't it? :)
| jonplackett wrote:
| I wonder if it's possible to calculate a rate of return on
| that.
|
| How much worse off would we be now without mRNA vaccines?
|
| I doubt anyone would be complaining about blood clots.
| shigawire wrote:
| Seems like China did fine with more conventional vaccine
| technologies. I'm glad we have another tool in the toolbox,
| but I am missing why the mRNA vaccine tech was necessary
| for COVID.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I think if we still had AstraZeneca we would not be in an
| awful position - but that vaccine already had a massive
| supply constraint - the EU is still pretty pissed about
| that. So if there were no other vaccines that would be
| worse for starters.
|
| Also, as others have pointed out, it's more effective.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong about this but it seems to be
| deceptive to think about it in terms of effectiveness.
|
| 60% doesn't seem _that_ much worse than 95%. Feels like 2
| /3 as good.
|
| But if you look at it the other way around it's 40% vs 5%
| which makes the gap much clearer - 8X more people getting
| symptoms (not sure what the data is on hospitalisation /
| deaths is though, probably closer)
|
| Plus I believe mRNA vaccines should end up being cheaper
| in the long run.
|
| Oh and plus you don't feel as bad after getting them.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _China did fine with more conventional vaccine
| technologies_
|
| China's Covid vaccine is _far_ less effective than the
| mRNA vaccines, a fact that 's been recognized by its own
| leaders [1]. It's also less extensible--we have covered
| most of the parameter space conventional methods offer. A
| new platform allows us to target _e.g._ HIV anew [2].
|
| [1]https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n969
|
| [2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/moderna-is-
| working-...
| ls612 wrote:
| The chinese vaccines are mostly inactivated coronavirus
| vaccines and are only 50-60% effective. We are seeing
| countries which relied heavily on them such as Chile and
| the Seychelles having large and sustained outbreaks
| because they aren't effective enough to stop the spread.
| They probably do fairly well against mortality though.
|
| I'd say we would be in an incredibly worse position if we
| only had J&J and Astrazeneca in the west. In the US the
| pandemic is over now and we have only vaccinated about
| half of people with the mRNA shots. I strongly doubt we
| would be normal again now if we had not had those.
| phh wrote:
| That's definitely pretty cool, and I really wish that European's
| funding had a track record anywhere close to DARPA (though I
| don't really complain, Europe funding isn't too bad)
|
| Does someone have information about the size of Moderna back
| then? TFA says they had 144 patents, so I guess they were already
| pretty big?
| ElDji wrote:
| So why are we paying 10 times the production price since this
| product has been payed by public funds ?
| gregshap wrote:
| Grants encourage early R&D, Purchasing Commitments encourage
| Product Development and Capital Investments. We can do more of
| both.
| madcows wrote:
| Probably better if the money isn't that tainted...
| mempko wrote:
| Read, Debt the First 5000 years by David Graeber. Which
| outlines what markets are really about. Markets are a tool for
| the government to provision itself. The government creates
| markets. The myth that markets were created because barter was
| annoying is plain wrong.
| solarkraft wrote:
| DARPA is an impressive VC. Could it make sense to apply their
| approach to other areas?
| davesque wrote:
| It's a grant though. I assume no strings attached like a VC.
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