The Department of Health and Human Services has signed an $8.2 million contract with Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna Therapeutics to speed what it calls a “novel vaccine” to stop the Zika virus.
The funding of Moderna’s work comes just days after HHS announced that it would give the Takeda Group in Japan $20 million to accelerate its work developing a Zika vaccine.
Takeda’s funding goes toward enabling it to prepare for a new drug application and, if all goes well, begin clinical trials as early as next year, while Moderna’s focus is on using messenger RNA technology.
