These Places and Companies Lead the Way in Developing Vaccines

Moderna leads all companies in vaccine candidates on PhRMA’s list, followed by such companies as Pfizer, GSK and BioNTech.

Since 2000, according to Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has approved nearly 900 new medicines, continuing a process that began in 1938 when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. (A fascinating point of entry is provided by the FDA into the year-by-year data history of NDAs, which in this case stands for new drug applications.)

If 900 seems like a lot, a report released last week by PhRMA says even more about the accelerating pace of innovation, as it contains detailed information about 286 vaccines (31% of that 24-year total) in clinical development or awaiting FDA review. The report, which includes a potential first-in-class vaccine for E. coli and a potential therapeutic vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease, fills a 42-page PDF that’s hard to sort by criteria such as location and company. So we did it for you.

CSL Seqirus performs manufacturing at this complex in Holly Springs, North Carolina..

Photo courtesy of CSL Seqirus

Moderna Therapeutics, which early this month opened a new headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the out-and-out leader in vaccine candidates with 33 medicines overall (including some with partners such as Merck), developed to treat such diseases as COVID variants, seasonal flu and Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Below are the tallies for the top sponsoring companies alongside their headquarters locations. (Forty-two of the 286 medicines involve multiple partners.)

*Sanofi is moving 1,900 employees from Bridgewater to new digs in Morristown, New Jersey

Notably, 29 of the listings are connected to companies based abroad, including six in South Korea, five in France, four in Norway and three in China. Paris, Seoul and Oslo account for four apiece.

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If we award a point to geographic locations for every time they are mentioned in the list, here are the top U.S. states and cities:

*see footnote above

Headquarters locations don’t tell the whole story. CSL Seqirus, for example, has its U.S. HQ in Summit, New Jersey, but major manufacturing takes place in Holly Springs, North Carolina, and the company maintains R&D operations in the same location nearly everyone else does: Cambridge, Massachusetts. — Adam Bruns

Data entry and organization for this report was performed by Karen Medernach, Daniel Boyer and McKenzie Wright.

This laboratory space at 325 Binney Street on the Alexandria Center® at One Kendall Square mega campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is part of Moderna’s newly opened HQ and R&D complex.

Photo courtesy of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.