Moderna strikes with a new lawsuit

Moderna is trying to be gatekeeper for the mRNA platform for future drug development, raising monopolistic fears

- LATHA JISHNU

PATENTLY ABSURD

AFTER all the laurels and accolades for developing a new-generation vaccine against COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic, the two competing companies that developed the mRNA jabs are facing off in a critical patent dispute. The outcome of the big-ticket litigation will determine how accessible the mRNA technology will be in developing future vaccines and therapies against a host of health hazards, ranging from influenza to cancer.

It took the industry by surprise when after a year of doing business peaceably and earning billions of dollars each, Moderna filed a patent infringement suit against its rival, PfizerBioNTech on August 26. BioNTech and Moderna had both developed their COVID-19 vaccines using the mRNA platform to attack the SARS-CoV-2 virus. While BioNTech, a biotechnology startup in Germany, tied up with multinational Pfizer for quick development of the Comirnaty vaccine, Moderna chose to go it alone to make its Spikevax vaccine.

Now, Moderna claims Pfizer-BioNTech has infringed three patents on its vaccine delivery system, which gets the drug inside a recipient's cells and generates a protein. In lawsuits filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf, where BioNTech is based, Moderna says that Comirnaty infringes patents it had filed between 2010 and 2016 covering the company's "foundational mRNA technology". It accuses its competitor of copying "this groundbreaking technology" which was critical to the development of its own Spikevax.