Moderna's brazen patent rab on a COVID jab

The US administration is finally putting its foot down on the appropriation of public research by drug firms

- LATHA JISHNU

A PUBLIC health advocacy group has helped blow the lid off a brazen heist— the attempt by a US drug company to corner the intellectual property rights (IPRS) on a covid-19 vaccine it developed in collaboration with the government. The company is Moderna, the darling of both Wall Street because of its ability to garner huge funds, and of public health campaigners because of its promise of sharing its technology. But corporate greed has seen the unraveling of a model partnership that would bring new drugs quickly to the market and ensure fair pricing.

It is an egregious appropriation because the vaccine is the result of a four-year collaboration between Moderna and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH); the government described it as the NIH-Moderna covid-19 vaccine in its documents. Although the company had not brought a single product into the market previously, the government had poured billions into the research project, which accelerated after the pandemic struck. Most estimates have put the funding it received from various government agencies at the US $2.5 billion, but a recent New York Times (NYT) report says Moderna has received nearly $10 billion in taxpayer funding “to develop the vaccine, test it and provide doses to the federal government”.

The dream of a people’s vaccine, as it was dubbed last year by public health campaigners, is fading fast as the controversy over who should be credited with developing the vaccine heads for the courts. That is because the government is finally saying enough is enough and is contesting Moderna’s claims of having developed the vaccine on its own. NIH is, in a surprising and heartening turn, insisting that its scientists who developed the technology be credited in the patent application made by the company.