WHO hired company to copy Moderna
The World Health Organization has hired the company, called Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, as part of a $100 million plan to figure out how to make an mRNA vaccine against COVID that is as close as possible to the version produced by Moderna.
As to why WHO has chosen to try to copy Moderna rather than the other mRNA COVID vaccine, which is made by Pfizer BioNTech, Friede says the choice was practical.
"Moderna has reiterated on several occasions that they will not enforce their intellectual property during the pandemic," says Friede. In other words, a manufacturer probably won't face a lawsuit for producing a vaccine that's virtually identical to Moderna's.
But Afrigen's Petro Treblanche says there are still a lot of unknowns. Take Moderna's patent.
"It's written very carefully and cleverly to not disclose absolutely everything," says Treblanche.
So while Afrigen has been able to determine most of the equipment and specialized ingredients that are needed, "what we don't know is the exact concentrations," says Treblanche. "And we don't know some of the mixing times — some of the conditions of mixing and formulating."
We're in a pandemic and Moderna isn't sharing the full COVID-19 vaccine recipe. That makes me uncomfortable. I get it – innovation should be protected and rewarded. Patents protect this tech for 20 years. But is it ethical for a company to guard profits when lives are at stake? Moderna promises not to enforce their IP during the pandemic, which seems reasonable enough. They released the genetic sequence but not the exact manufacturing procedure.