I know making a vaccine is a little different than making strawberry jam, but why is there so little supply of the Moderna vaccine given this situation?
Moderna waiving Intellectual Property rights for the remainder of the pandemic (2020)
21–30 of 74 posts
Re: Moderna waiving Intellectual Property rights for the remainder of the pandemic (2020)
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
upon request we are also willing to license our intellectual property for COVID-19 vaccines to others How is that different from what they would be doing normally? Companies generally like to license their IP, it brings in lots of cash for little (extra) effort. Note that they don't claim to be offering reduced license fees in this part of their statement!
Companies like Moderna that are currently using IP are not always willing to license it. Sometimes they prefer to keep it in-house and reserved for their own use.
Especially given not all of the world has a tradition of caring about foreign IP enforcement. Say, post-pandemic and when you'd like to use Moderna's methods for other drugs.
Which, say what you want about IP law, but pharma objectively has the best claim to it -- if we want new drugs and safety, exclusivity periods and sole ownership of IP are the only way to balance the massive initial financial outlay. (Without funding it directly from government)
Re: Moderna waiving Intellectual Property rights for the remainder of the pandemic (2020)
#23My understanding used to be that this will not change much on an immediate basis since the nano-particle delivery system + its manufacturing chain are quite complicated and not easily scalable. Does anyone know if this is not the case?
Yeah, that's what I've read. Basically, even if you could make the necessary mRNA particles properly, the it's useless without the delivery mechanism. Only a few companies even produce the necessary lipid products needed to deliver the vaccine, and they (and their suppliers) are already doing everything they can.
The IP concerns had basically zero effect on the availability of vaccines.
Re: Moderna waiving Intellectual Property rights for the remainder of the pandemic (2020)
#24I know making a vaccine is a little different than making strawberry jam, but why is there so little supply of the Moderna vaccine given this situation?
I see a lot of Moderna vaccine appointments in MA. Maybe they don't have the scale like Pfizer and most of their supply is staying in MA?
Re: Moderna waiving Intellectual Property rights for the remainder of the pandemic (2020)
#25Since this was posted 6 month ago, has any company taken advantage of this by now?
Knowing the formula for the vaccine is one thing, being able to manufacture it at large scale is another (that surely require industrial secrets). This article has some more details: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/02/my...
Re: Moderna waiving Intellectual Property rights for the remainder of the pandemic (2020)
#26This looks like a good gesture from Moderna, but I do not think it will be of much help for most the developing world since the low temperatures needed for the storage of the vaccine are not feasible for the distribution infrastructure of these countries.
Re: Moderna waiving Intellectual Property rights for the remainder of the pandemic (2020)
#27My understanding used to be that this will not change much on an immediate basis since the nano-particle delivery system + its manufacturing chain are quite complicated and not easily scalable. Does anyone know if this is not the case?
For anyone interested: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/02/my...
Around the time of this post I tried to get a bit more information on this, and ... well, here's the rabbit hole:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68p3qAm4i7U
Use lithography to create the mold, then cure it, then put it into a pure O2 enivornment, then drop it on a glass plate and you just plasma glued the silicone and the glass.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYuyRUjnTgc
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjyM8sNplm4
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTmgqFCIbsA
I still have no idea where the bottleneck actually is. Derek Lowe claimed that the manufacturers of the microfluidics devices are. Which is likely, because hacking together something in/for a lab is very different than getting it ready for "FDA GMP [good manufacturing practices] approval" ... but at the same time there are thousands of people dying every day, and I'd like to see the extraordinary evidence to support the extraordinary claim that it's "impossible" to scale up vaccine manufacturing. (Impossible here meaning that it's impossible to get to the same necessary purity and control.)
Re: Moderna waiving Intellectual Property rights for the remainder of the pandemic (2020)
#28I know making a vaccine is a little different than making strawberry jam, but why is there so little supply of the Moderna vaccine given this situation?
I see a lot of Moderna vaccine appointments in MA. Maybe they don't have the scale like Pfizer and most of their supply is staying in MA?
Nope, I got Moderna weeks ago on Staten Island, NYC.
Re: Moderna waiving Intellectual Property rights for the remainder of the pandemic (2020)
#29So, layman question: will it increase moderna's vaccine availability? Or is it about something else entirely?
This is from last year, and the answer is no. The supply constraints are unrelated to IP, and always have been.
Re: Moderna waiving Intellectual Property rights for the remainder of the pandemic (2020)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>White dudes Since when did this become a race thing?
It became a race thing when the USA and European powers used race as an explicit justification for the (attempted) rape and enslavement of pretty much the rest of the world.
Do you know that Europe is a continent with many countries?