A Covid vaccine maker that received clinical trial approvals from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), formerly headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, has just paid $400 million to the “public health” organization. The cash windfall that Moderna recently paid the NIAID was reported by the industry watchdog group Fierce Pharma.
“In Moderna’s earnings release Thursday, the company said it recently paid the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) a $400 million ‘catch-up payment’ under a new royalty-bearing license agreement between the parties,” the report noted.
“The payment is part of a license agreement between Moderna and NIAID inked late last year. With the deal, Moderna is paying the U.S. government to access ‘certain patent rights concerning stabilizing prefusion coronavirus spike proteins,’” the report added, citing Moderna Chief Financial Officer Jamie Mock.
Moderna agreed to pay NIAID “low single-digit royalties” on COVID-19 vaccine sales moving forward, Mock added.
As the report adds, “this agreement does not put Moderna out of the woods on the patent litigation front. Even after this deal, the vaccine maker is fighting with the U.S. National Institutes of Health over the origins of the core technology in the vaccine,” The New York Times points out.
“The N.I.H. said its scientists, some of whom had been collaborating for years with Moderna, had helped to design that sequence. Moderna also received nearly $10 billion in taxpayer funding to develop and test the vaccine, and to provide doses to the federal government,” the Times reported. “The company has sold roughly $36 billion worth of coronavirus vaccines worldwide.”
“But even as the fight over the sequence attracted public attention, including suggestions from the N.I.H. that it might consider legal action, another standoff played out largely in private, this one concerning the chemical tweak that was the subject of the payments announced on Thursday,” the report added.
“That technique was integral to a number of coronavirus vaccines, including Moderna’s, scientists said,” the Times continued. “It entailed changing the mRNA code within the vaccines so that they would help people generate an immune response to the version of spike proteins present on the surface of the coronavirus before they fused with human cells.”
Moderna is also “facing patent suits from mRNA rivals Pfizer and BioNTech, plus a separate case from Arbutus and Roivant’s Genevant Sciences.” A case between Pfizer and Moderna is heading to trial in London next April, Reuters reported last week.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky last September grilled Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top Covid doctor, over the nation’s public health organizations’ incestuous financial relationships with Big Pharma.
Watch:
“Do any of the guidelines for vaccines from the government include previous infection as something to base your decision making on with vaccines?” Senator Paul asked. “Do any of the guidelines involve previous infection? That’s why you’re ignoring previous infection, because it doesn’t involve any of the guidelines. And furthermore, we’ve been asking you, and you refuse to answer, whether anybody on the vaccine committees gets royalties from the pharmaceutical companies. I asked you last time and what was your response? We don’t have to tell you. Right? We’ve demanded them through Freedom of Information Act. And what have you said, ‘we’re not going to tell you.’
“But I tell you this,” Paul warned. “When we get in charge, we’re going to change the rules and you will have to divulge where you get your royalties from, from what companies. And if anybody in the committee has a conflict of interest, we’re going to learn about it. I promise you that.”
“Mr. Chair, can I, can I respond to that please?” Fauci asked. “Okay. There are two aspects for what you said, you keep saying, ‘you approve, you do this, you do that.; The committees that give the approval are FDA through their advisory committee. The committees that recommend are CDC through their advisory committee. And you keep saying, ‘I’m the one that’s approving a vaccine based on certain data.’ So I don’t really understand, with all due respect, Senator…”
“You are the one that said you would not reveal, you would not reveal what company gave you royalties or what company gave the other scientists royalties,” Paul said.
“They’re not my committees,” Fauci repeated. “They’re the VRBPAC committee for the FDA and the ACIP for the CDC. So I don’t have any idea what goes on…”
“They won’t reveal, as well as you won’t reveal,” Paul added, before being cut off.
Dr. Fauci made an obscene amount of money during the Covid pandemic. According to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s FY2021 financial disclosures from the National Institutes of Health that were surveyed by watchdog group OpentheBooks, the Fauci household’s net worth “now exceeds $12.6 million – up $5 million from 2019 through 2021.” That’s a 70% boon for the nation’s highest paid civil servant at a time when Americans have lost an average income of $4,200 a year under the Biden administration.
