A Covid vaccine maker that received clinical trial approvals from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), formerly headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, has just paid $400 million to the “public health” organization.
The “catch-up-payment” that Moderna recently paid the NIAID was reported by the industry watchdog group Fierce Pharma as well as by the New York Times.
“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 agreed to pay NIAID “low single-digit royalties” on COVID-19 vaccine sales moving forward, Mock added.
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.”
Moderna is also “facing patent suits from mRNA rivals Pfizer and BioNTech, plus a separate case from Arbutus and Roivant’s Genevant Sciences.” A case between Pfizer and Moderna is heading to trial in London next April, Reuters reported last week.