Thread by @ydeigin

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So I took a look at the 1989 Malone et al. paper cited as proof of his "mRNA vaccines inventorship" to see what the invention was. If I read it correctly, what they did is take the known method of DNA lipofection (delivering DNA into cells using lipids) and applied it to RNA:

https://twitter.com/alexandrosM/status/1437632776153419780

Also, as they state in the opening paragraph, other groups have already shown ways to deliver RNA into cells years before:

"By comparison, progress in introducing RNA molecules into cells has been very slow and restricted to a few cases (1-4)."

2nd pic has those references 1-4:

Regarding Malone's 5 patents — all of them were actually filed by Vical *after* Malone left Vical in 1989, and probably carry his name only because they all are continuations of application US32630589A filed in March 1989 (this way the 5 patents all get the 1989 priority date).

Malone is not the first author on any of those 5 patents, and interestingly, the first author of those patents, Philip L. Felgner, has patents on liposomes and vaccines filed long before Malone did his work on RNA lipofection I mentioned above.

This is probably why the 1990 article on Vical's technology mentions Malone only as "other collaborators":

latimes.com/archives/la-xp…

So Malone was briefly involved in the field of liposomal DNA/RNA transfection in late 1980s, along with many others. Has he individually made any groundbreaking contributions to the field to deserve the title of "the inventor of mRNA vaccines"? Doesn't look that way to me.

Oh, and Felgner has actually published on using cationic lipofection of DNA and RNA *before* Malone:

Intriguingly, to support his claims that Felgner "stole" his invention, Malone has published some of his correspondence with Felgner where he seems to acknowledge that the idea to try Felgner's lipofection technique (Malone's words) came from Felgner:

static1.squarespace.com/static/550b0ac…

Malone's time at Vical was quite short: he resigned just a few months after they filed the initial patent application. In his resignation letter Malone stated that he felt that Felgner was taking credit for Malone's contributions:

Now, if Felgner, building on his previous success with DNA lipofection, commissioned Malone to try his lipofection method on RNA and provided Malone with the actual lipid mixtures, how much credit for inventing not even mRNA vaccines but just mRNA lipofection can Malone claim?

PS: I think this thread wouldn’t be complete without this observation about how Malone didn’t even claim to be the inventor of mRNA vaccines until May 2021:

https://twitter.com/ydeigin/status/1479977277245075457