The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is maintaining its position in a patent dispute over Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine - and may be prepared to take legal action if necessary.
'Clearly this is something that legal authorities are going to have to figure out,' NIH director Dr Francis Collins said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday.
After a years-long collaboration on the technology underlying Moderna's Covid vaccine, the NIH and the company disagree on whether NIH scientists should be included as co-inventors on the technology's patent.
A potential legal battle could end in the U.S. government taking ownership of the vaccine and selling it to manufacturers in other countries, thus increasing global vaccine supply.
Dr Francis Collins, director of the NIH, maintains that NIH scientists have a claim to inventing Moderna's Covid vaccine. Pictured: Collins holds up a model of the coronavirus as he testifies on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, May 2021
Moderna maintains that only its own scientists were involved in inventing the vaccine. Pictured: Vials of Moderna's vaccine, photographed at a clinic in Connecticut, April 2021
For years prior to the Covid pandemic, NIH scientists worked with Moderna on developing potential messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines.
The company - which had not brought a commercial product to market prior to 2020 - received billions of dollars in funding from the federal government for vaccine research and production.
This includes about $1.4 billion to develop and test the vaccine and $8.1 billion to provide the U.S. government with millions of doses.
mRNA, a type of genetic material, can be used to teach the human immune system how to respond to a particular virus.
Before the pandemic, NIH scientists helped Moderna with addressing key challenges of mRNA vaccines.
Three NIH scientists at the Vaccine Research Center were particularly crucial to the collaboration, the agency has said.
According to the agency, these scientists - Dr John Mascola, Dr Barney Graham and Dr Kizzmekia Corbett - worked on key aspects of the vaccine's design, including identifying the genetic material for the coronavirus' spike protein.
And these scientists should be named on Moderna's patent application for the vaccine technology, the NIH says.
