MRNA vaccine pioneer Moderna plans to open a new hub in Atlanta, expanding the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company's operations to the Southeast for the first time.

Moderna expects to open what it calls an Enterprise Solutions Hub in the second quarter of this year, where it will create more than 150 jobs over the next two years, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Thursday.

While Moderna gained prestige and market share in the last two years as a biotechnology research firm with its successful Covid-19 vaccine, it doesn't plan to do any research in Atlanta initially. In the announcement, it said it will hire for finance, human resources, procurement and digital solutions positions and will “continue to identify opportunities to host additional functions and business services” in the future.

Atlanta leaders and biotech supporters have touted this announcement as a sign of the metro’s nascent but growing life sciences industry. A 2021 Newmark report identified Atlanta as a potential future cluster, due in part to an in-development 18-acre innovation district in West Midtown from Trammell Crow, Georgia Tech and others.

Late last year, Moderna announced the construction of a new, 462K SF headquarters in Cambridge's Kendall Square, to be built and managed by Alexandria Real Estate Equities. The lease was one of the largest in the country in 2021.