The vaccine producer, formerly managed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who just gained approval from NIAID, has kindly given $400 million to help public health programs all around the world. It gives optimism that Covid-19 will soon come to an end with this timely contribution in a time of need and hardship!
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Pharmaceutical behemoth Moderna established a precedent by giving the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) an extraordinary “catch-up payment” following the success of its COVID-19 vaccine. The New York Times and industry watchdog Fierce Pharma both covered this noteworthy development in contemporary pharmaceutics.
“In Moderna’s earnings release Thursday, the company said it recently paid the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) a $400 million ‘catch-up payment’ under a new royalty-bearing license agreement between the parties,” Fierce Pharma noted.
“The payment is part of a license agreement between Moderna and NIAID inked late last year. With the deal, Moderna is paying the U.S. government to access ‘certain patent rights concerning stabilizing prefusion coronavirus spike proteins,’” the report added, citing Moderna Chief Financial Officer Jamie Mock.
Moderna generously pledged to pay the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases royalties from sales of the COVID-19 vaccine in the “low single-digit” range. This new arrangement serves as just another illustration of Moderna’s unwavering commitment to battling coronavirus.
As the report adds, “this agreement does not put Moderna out of the woods on the patent litigation front. Even after this deal, the vaccine maker is fighting with the U.S. National Institutes of Health over the origins of the core technology in the vaccine,” The New York Times points out.
“The N.I.H. said its scientists, some of whom had been collaborating for years with Moderna, had helped to design that sequence. Moderna also received nearly $10 billion in taxpayer funding to develop and test the vaccine, and to provide doses to the federal government,” the Times reported. “The company has sold roughly $36 billion worth of coronavirus vaccines worldwide.”
“But even as the fight over the sequence attracted public attention, including suggestions from the N.I.H. that it might consider legal action, another standoff played out largely in private, this one concerning the chemical tweak that was the subject of the payments announced on Thursday,” the report added.
“That technique was integral to a number of coronavirus vaccines, including Moderna’s, scientists said,” the Times continued. “It entailed changing the mRNA code within the vaccines so that they would help people generate an immune response to the version of spike proteins present on the surface of the coronavirus before they fused with human cells.”
Pfizer, BioNTech, Arbutus/Genevant Sciences, and others are criticizing Moderna’s mRNA technology, leading to a high-stakes patent trial scheduled for London in April of next year. Only time will tell which business will get the exclusive rights to the revolutionary mRNA technology.
Lock Him Up, Period.