Derrick Rossi

Derrick J. Rossi (born 5 February 1966), is a Canadian stem cell biologist and entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of the pharmaceutical company Moderna.

Early life and education Rossi was born in Toronto as the youngest of five children of a Maltese immigrant family. His father Fred worked in auto body shops for 50 years and his mother Agnes co-owned a Maltese bakery. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Helsinki in 2003 and held a post-doc position from 2003 to 2007 at Stanford University in Irving Weissman’s lab.

Career Rossi in 2007 was appointed Associate Professor at the Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Department at Harvard Medical School and Harvard University. At the same time he was a principal faculty member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and an investigator at the Immune Disease Institute (IDI), as well as in the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the Children’s Hospital Boston.

Moderna was founded in 2010, based on discovery that pluripotent stem cells can be transformed and reprogrammed. Time magazine cited this pluripotent discovery as one of the top ten medical breakthroughs of the year.

In 2013 Rossi, Chien and their team reported that they "were able to improve heart function in mice and enhance their long-term survival with a "redirection of their [stem cell] differentiation toward cardiovascular cell types" in a significant step towards regenerative therapeutics for Moderna. In the same year and on the strength of the same paper Moderna was able to partner with AstraZeneca in exchange for $240 million "in upfront cash (plus much more in potential milestone payments)", and then received from other investors $110 million. which develops new medication for treating cancerous stem cells.

In 2018 Rossi retired from all of his Harvard positions in order to focus on his activities as an entrepreneur.

Scientific contributions Rossi develops and promotes new therapies using biotechnological methods thus contributing to novel approaches in regenerative medicine.

Rossi is on record as writing of his synthetic modified mRNA: "because our technology is RNA based, it completely eliminates the risk of genomic integration and insertional mutagenesis inherent to all DNA-based methodologies."

Awards and honours In 2021 he was awarded the Princess of Asturias Award in the category "Scientific Research".

Selected papers

Family life Rossi is married to Finnish biologist Nina Korsisaari and father of three daughters.