MRNA Moderna Inc

By Will Feuer

Moderna Inc. said Tuesday that it shipped about 800 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine last year and said that bringing new products to market are among its top priorities in the year ahead.

The company also finished the year with cash, cash equivalents and investments of more than $17 billion, Moderna Chief Executive Stephane Bancel said in a letter to shareholders. He said the company entered 2021 with a cash position of about $5.25 billion.

Bancel said the company continues to work on new products, including a fall 2022 booster for its Covid-19 vaccine. Eventually, the company hopes to combine the Covid-19 booster shot with a booster for the flu vaccine. Moderna said it anticipates a candidate for that combined shot to be in the clinic soon.

Developing such a pan-respiratory annual single-dose booster vaccine, which would eventually also cover respiratory syncytial virus, is Moderna's top priority in 2022, Bancel said.

The company's next priority is to develop vaccines against latent viruses, such as HIV. It also hopes to develop therapeutics using mRNA-encoded proteins, and said it will prioritize bringing to market therapeutics based on mRNA-encoded gene editing enzymes.

Moderna stock fell 1% in premarket trading Tuesday. Shares in the company more than doubled in 2021, but are down almost 30% over the past three months.

Write to Will Feuer at Will.Feuer@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 04, 2022 09:00 ET (14:00 GMT)

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