by A leading National Institutes of Health scientist who helped develop a key technology used in Pfizer and Moderna's coronavirus vaccines said this week that the U.S. government's ownership of the patent for the invention gives the Biden administration significant leverage to compel pharmaceutical companies to help boost global production.Dr. Barney Graham, deputy director of the NIH's Vaccine Research Center, told the Financial Times in an interview this week that "virtually everything that comes out of the government's research labs is a non-exclusive licensing agreement so that it doesn't get blocked by any particular company."Part of the team of scientists that in 2016 conceived the spike-protein technology being utilized in the highly effective mRNA vaccines, Graham told FT that "one
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A leading National Institutes of Health scientist who helped develop a key technology used in Pfizer and Moderna's coronavirus vaccines said this week that the U.S. government's ownership of the patent for the invention gives the Biden administration significant leverage to compel pharmaceutical companies to help boost global production.US government owns the patent on mRNA tech.Dr. Barney Graham, deputy director of the NIH's Vaccine Research Center, told the Financial Times in an interview this week that "virtually everything that comes out of the government's research labs is a non-exclusive licensing agreement so that it doesn't get blocked by any particular company."
Part of the team of scientists that in 2016 conceived the spike-protein technology being utilized in the highly effective mRNA vaccines, Graham told FT that "one of the reasons" he joined NIH was "to be able to use the leverage of the public funding to solve public health issues."
While Pfizer's partner BioNTech has licensed the technology from the U.S. government and is paying royalties, Moderna has not—and the Biden administration has not attempted to enforce the patent....