Since October 1, 2024, Séverine Lemoine, doctor of pharmacy from the University of Paris V (now Paris Cité) and holder of a master’s degree in marketing and management from Essec, is the new general director of Moderna France. She will coordinate all activities and support access to Moderna’s messenger RNA-based vaccines and therapeutic solutions in France.
Séverine Lemoine replaces Sandra Fournier, who held this position since June 2021 and who set up the French operations of the American laboratory specializing in vaccines and therapeutic treatments based on messenger RNA.
More than twenty years of experience in labs
Product manager at AstraZeneca between 2002 and 2005, Séverine Lemoine participated in the launch of Arimidex, a product indicated in the treatment of breast cancer, before joining Novartis to take charge of marketing for the Zometa brand (zoledronic acid) and anticancer treatments. She then spent ten years at Roche, between 2010 and 2020, first in commercial positions in onco-hematology, oncology and treatments related to breast cancer, before taking responsibility for the unit dedicated to oncology. breast in 2016, and to become head of the unit responsible for oncology in 2018, which she participated in the creation of.
First employee of the French subsidiary of the American biotech Seagen in April 2020 (bought at the end of 2023 by Pfizer) she created this entity by obtaining the various authorizations, recruiting and launching a new treatment Tukysa, against cancer of the breast. A member of the Health Industries Reflection Circle, which brings together leaders of French health companies, she co-founded the Health Industries Leadership Circle and followed the “Women board ready” program at Essec.
Declining sales around the world
This appointment comes in a tense context for Moderna. Last August, the company lowered its sales forecast for 2024forecasting an annual turnover of between $3 and $3.5 billion, compared to an initial forecast of around $4 billion in 2024. The laboratory recorded a net loss of $4.7 billion in 2023, particularly linked to the drop in sales of its vaccines against Covidwho made it known to the general public at the height of the pandemic.
Estimating that flu vaccines will be a nearly $7 billion market in 2024, Moderna announced in April an agreement with the American investment fund Blackstonewhich must provide 750 million dollars (694 million euros) to Moderna to advance R&D on the subject. Payments and royalties relating to sales must be remitted to Blackstone. The laboratory is also working, in the United States, on a vaccine against avian flu.
