Moderna Launches Third Venture Company Elpidera for Rare Diseases
Greg Licholai, M.D., hired as president to lead the venture to advance novel messenger RNA therapies
Moderna therapeutics announced the launch of Elpidera LLC, a new Moderna venture focused exclusively on the advancement of mRNA-based medicines for the treatment of rare diseases. The third in a series of venture companies created by Moderna, Elpidera will be led by Dr. Greg Licholai, an industry leader with experience in drug development, rare disease and R&D innovation. Elpidera, which is derived from the Greek word elpida meaning "hope," will leverage Moderna's mRNA platform to create novel therapies to address diseases in small patient populations with severe unmet medical needs.
Moderna signed a strategic agreement with Alexion in January 2014 allowing Alexion to have 10 product options in rare diseases. Elpidera will advance programs that are independent from the Alexion programs and proprietary to Moderna, while also supporting Alexion in its efforts to leverage the Moderna technology platform through the existing agreement.
"The creation of new venture teams is critical to advancing our decentralized drug development business strategy at Moderna. We are pleased to announce Elpidera as our second venture company launched in 2015 after launching Valera, our venture company focused in infectious diseases," said Stéphane Bancel, chief executive officer of Moderna. "Ventures are the other leg of our strategy to add to the efforts of our pharma and biotech partners. In total, we are driving more than 50 preclinical mRNA programs across cardiovascular, infectious diseases, oncology, and rare diseases."
Dr. Greg Licholai will serve as president of Elpidera. He has more than 25 years of experience in biotechnology leadership, in both consulting and entrepreneurial capacities. Prior to Moderna, he was senior vice president for real-world and late-stage research at Quintiles. Before that he was a partner-level consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he led a business line devoted to big data analytics for new drug launches. Dr. Licholai also has extensive experience as an executive at multiple biotechnology companies. He was chief operating officer of Proteostasis, a private biotechnology company, and earlier, was one of the first senior executives at rare disease biotech Amicus Therapeutics, helping put three products into human clinical trials for orphan indications and take the company public in 2007. He was also co-founder of Immunome, a biotech firm focused on a novel antibody platform. Dr. Licholai received his M.D. from Yale Medical School and his M.B.A from Harvard Business School.
Other news from the department business & finance
