The Referral That Led Örn To Moderna

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“You've gotta get in the house without the alarms going off.”

Örn Almarsson compares therapeutic mRNA delivery to a covert package drop: the payload has to reach the right room, release its contents, and leave without triggering the immune system.

He looks back at Johnson & Johnson, Alkermes, and the relationships that shaped his next move. A referral from Bob Langer led him to Moderna, where he joined a small team working through one of biotech's hardest engineering problems.

The conversation covers layoffs, company transformation, patent cliffs, biotech's feast-and-famine cycles, modified mRNA, and the effort required to scale production from tiny academic batches to grams and kilograms.

Key Topics Covered:

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Find our guest, Örn Almarsson, at these links:

Website: https://www.axelyf.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orn-almarsson

Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/

Learn more about Excedr:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/

Website: https://www.excedr.com

Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, OkKyojin:

https://flow.page/kyojin

Resources & Articles:

Nobel Prize: discoveries concerning mRNA vaccines: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2023/press-release/

Alkermes: https://www.alkermes.com/

Johnson & Johnson: https://www.jnj.com/

NCBI Molecular Biology reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21054/

Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:

Johnson & Johnson: https://www.jnj.com/

Merck: https://www.merck.com/

MIT: https://www.mit.edu/

Eli Lilly: https://www.lilly.com

Alkermes: https://www.alkermes.com/

Harvard Business School: https://www.hbs.edu/

Moderna: https://www.modernatx.com/

Flagship Pioneering: https://www.flagshippioneering.com/

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/

UPS: https://www.ups.com/

00:06 Intro

01:28 Johnson & Johnson's Acquisition-Driven Model

02:25 Organic Growth, Acquisitions, and Commercialization

04:20 Why Pharma's Growth Strategy Keeps Changing

05:05 Leaving Johnson & Johnson for Alkermes

07:45 Transforming Alkermes Through a Hard Reset

10:03 ARISTADA and the Case for Embracing Change

10:38 Biotech's Volatility and Patent Cliffs

14:26 Regulatory Exclusivity and Biosimilars

16:00 The Shift Toward Asset-Focused Biotech

17:16 The Call That Led to Moderna

20:35 The Delivery Challenge for Therapeutic mRNA

22:48 Scaling mRNA From Micrograms to Kilograms

25:29 Modified mRNA and the Future of RNA Medicine

27:47 Outro

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.