Seven days in medicine: 31 Aug to 6 Sep 2022 – The BMJ

Moderna sues Pfizer over vaccine technology

The vaccine manufacturer Moderna is suing the US drug company Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, for patent infringement of mRNA technology used in the first covid-19 vaccines, which it says it developed before the pandemic. Moderna alleges in a lawsuit filed in the US and Germany that the companies copied two key elements of its intellectual property. The first is a chemical modification whereby a vaccine avoids provoking an undesirable immune response, and the second relates to the way both of the covid vaccines target the spike protein. Early in the pandemic Moderna said that it would not enforce patents of its covid vaccine, to help other drug companies develop their own vaccines.1

The head of the UK governments taskforce on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has returned to her role overseeing the vaccine taskforce, ahead of the rollout of the omicron booster programme this month. Madelaine McTernan was asked to take on the HRT role in April to tackle serious supply issues. Four months later the access to HRT products has improved, but shortage protocolswhich limit dispensing to three months supply and allow specified alternative products to be supplied if necessarywill remain in place for 12 HRT products, including some gels and

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Seven days in medicine: 31 Aug to 6 Sep 2022 - The BMJ