As Moderna maps out a more cautious future amid lower-than-expected sales of its current products, the company is bolstering its marketing team.
The mRNA specialist announced this week that it has nabbed Amy Mahery as its new chief marketing officer, a senior VP role. In a social media post, the company wrote, “We’re thrilled to have her on board as we continue to build for 2025 and beyond.”
Mahery hails most recently from Roivant Sciences, where she’d served as chief commercial officer since the summer of 2022. Before that, she spent the better part of two decades at EMD Serono, Merck KGaA’s U.S. pharma subsidiary. Her 18 years there spanned a range of roles across its commercial team, including stints leading marketing for cancer drug Bavencio and, ultimately, as global business head of the neurology and immunology franchise.
“Throughout my career, I’ve been passionate about bridging commercial strategy with R&D to bring innovative medicines to patients and create value for patients, companies, and society,” Mahery wrote on LinkedIn. “From leading global franchises at market-leading organizations to building commercial capabilities in emerging biopharma, I’ve had the privilege of working across multiple therapeutic areas and stages of company growth.”
She continued, “What drew me to Moderna is its relentless focus on innovation—pushing the boundaries of mRNA technology to transform medicine and improve lives. I’m honored to join this mission-driven team and look forward to collaborating to expand global access, shape the pipeline, and bring new solutions to patients.”
Mahery joins Moderna just over a year after the company bid farewell to its chief commercial officer, Arpa Garay, opting instead to split her sales and marketing work between Stephen Hoge, M.D., Moderna’s president, and CEO Stephane Bancel.
More recently, Moderna has laid out a commercial roadmap less aggressive than its previous plans. In a letter to shareholders at the start of this year, Bancel described how the company will take a “more selective and paced approach” to rolling out new products. Moderna now has its eye on earning 10 new approvals over the next three years; advancement of other programs will be shelved in the meantime, until “we have shown we are better prepared to effectively launch these products into global markets either directly or through strategic partners,” he wrote.
The more tempered approach comes as Moderna prepares to announce full-year 2024 results this month that will include sales of its flagship COVID-19 vaccine Spikevax, which like all COVID products has seen a major drop-off in recent years, and earnings for its respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine mRESVIA, that has also seen a tough launch trajectory. Mahery will now take up the challenge of trying to further boost these flagging sales, plus any new drugs to come from its relatively extensive pipeline in the future.
Ahead of a presentation at this year’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in January, Moderna released a business update outlining plans to cut $1 billion from its expenses this year, plus another $500 million in 2026. The company is now expecting to rake in sales between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion in 2025, down from previous forecasts that put the low end of this year’s earnings at $2.5 billion, and a drop from 2024’s take, which is expected to weigh in between $3 billion and $3.1 billion.