Thread by @jbkrell

So this is a common question to ask -- if Moderna has pledged to not enforce their patents, why can't we start production everywhere? Three reasons:🧵

https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1389712036410626053

The 1st, Moderna doesn't own every patent that is used in its vaccine and in the machines used to make their vaccine. Put simply, it can't pledge to not enforce patents it doesn't own. Let's take the most obvious example of this. 2/n

Both NIH/Moderna & Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine use modified nucleosides, specifically n1-methylpseudouridine (rather than uridine, the "U" in the RNA genetic alphabet). in their mRNA This allows the vaccine to express a protein without triggering a cell's antiviral defenses. 3/n

Moderna did not invent this technology! Rather Drew Weissman & Katlin Kariko invented it at Penn and patented it (e.g. U.S. Patent No. 8278036B2). Penn than exclusively licensed this technology to Cellscript. Cellscript than sublicensed this IP to Moderna and BNT for $75 mil each

See: khn.org/news/vaccine-p…

Here is the thing -- Moderna could give up its patents (they are not doing that), but anyone who tried to make a copy of mRNA-1273 could (and would) be sued by cellscript. There are a bunch of other patents here that Moderna has licensed or uses that it does not own, but uses.

This is especially true of machines that are used to make the vaccine, for example microfluidic lipid nanoprecipitate mixers. Which brings us to the second and 3rd reason, it is pretty difficult to scale up manufacturing of this vaccine without significant funding and tech trans.

tl;dr -- we need three things: 1. A TRIPS waiver, 2. public funding for scale up of vaccine manufacturing, and 3. facilitated tech transfer to transfer know how to other manufacturers. cc: @kenyonfarrow @chrislhayes @gregggonsalves

Here is our plan to scale up mRNA vaccine access and production: prep4all.org/news/hit-hard-…