90-Second Read: A New Hantavirus Vaccine Is in the Works

Since 2023, Moderna and Korea University have been developing a new mRNA vaccine for Hantavirus. This comes after an outbreak of Hantavirus occurred on a Dutch cruise ship that sailed from Argentina and disembarked its passengers and crew in the Canary Islands on May 10. Following the announcement that Moderna was developing a Hantavirus vaccine using this same technology, the drugmaker's stock rose from $49 on May 7 to $55 the next day. US-based pharmaceutical company Moderna confirmed that it has been working on the development of Hantavirus vaccines in collaboration with the Vaccine Innovation Center of Korea University College of Medicine (VIC-K).

Overall, Hantaviruses cause around 50,000 serious and often fatal infections worldwide each year. The mechanism of the collaboration works like this: The Korean team provides the Hantavirus antigenic sequence information and Moderna supplies the corresponding mRNA material. With respect to Hantavirus, other agencies are working on vaccine development, most notably the long-standing work of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Moderna is the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company that perfected messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In fact, Hantavirus has been a known pathogen for decades. Transmitted mainly through exposure to the droppings, urine, or saliva of infected rodents, it can cause hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (prevalent in Asia or Europe) or Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (more common in the Americas). In February 2025, Park Man-sung's team from the Department of Microbiology confirmed that experimental doses prevented Hantavirus infection in mice. In addition, Hantaviruses are diverse and have regional variations.

The biotech firm and VIC-K signed a research and development agreement in September 2023 under the US company's mRNA Access initiative, a program that provides preclinical-stage mRNA vaccine candidates to academic teams working on emerging or neglected infectious diseases. But the episode reminds us of a lesson from the Covid-19 pandemic: The best time to develop a vaccine against a dangerous virus is before that virus becomes a global emergency. The distance between a mouse trial and a licensed vaccine for humans is considerable, especially when there is no longer the sense of urgency of the pandemic or the government support of Operation Warp Speed.