Moderna sues Pfizer/BioNTech for patent infringement over COVID vaccine

[JudyM]

4. Interesting

I didn’t realize Moderna had developed the technology… The
BioNTech team was just using it for cancer research

… The BioNTech story took a twist when Sahin in January came across a scientific paper on a new coronavirus outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan and it struck him how small the step was from anti-cancer mRNA drugs to mRNA-based viral vaccines.

BioNTech quickly assigned about 500 staff to project “light speed” to work on several possible compounds, winning pharma giant Pfizer and Chinese drugmaker Fosun as partners in March.

Matthias Theobald, a fellow oncology professor at Mainz university who has worked with Sahin for 20 years, said his tendency towards understatement belies a relentless ambition to transform medicine, exemplified by the leap of faith to a COVID-19 vaccine.

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-biontech-ceo-newsmake/behind-pfizers-vaccine-an-understated-husband-and-wife-dream-team-idUSKBN27P1O5