Moderna Therapeutics, a private biotech firm worth a reported $7.5 billion, lost its head of vaccines just after the company raised $500 million on the promise of advancing vaccines into late-stage trials.
Giuseppe Ciaramella, who joined Moderna in 2014, left the company in February for a job at an early-stage biotech startup, according to people familiar with the matter. As chief scientific officer of Moderna’s vaccine business, Ciaramella managed the company’s most-advanced projects, authoring the firm’s journal publications and shepherding seven investigational vaccines into clinical trials.
It was Ciaramella who first suggested that Moderna’s foundational technology could be useful in vaccines, former employees said, an idea that became vitally important to the company when it pivoted to infectious disease after repeated setbacks to its ambitions in rare disease.
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