8 ms·

From the article: The researchers have applied for patents on both the antibodies and the mouse model used to produce them. They hope to see their work develop

From the article: The researchers have applied for patents on both the antibodies and the mouse model used to produce them. They hope to see their work developed commercially. ... followed by This work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (INV-021989), the National institutes of Health (NIAID Consortia for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development UM1-AI144371, P01 AI158571, Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award GM130386, Harvard Virology Program training grant T32 AI07245), Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR) SARS-CoV-2 Variants Award, Emergent Ventures fast grant, FDA (MCMi grant #OCET 2021-1565 and Perinatal Health Center of Excellence project grant #GCBER005), the Danish Technical University and SANA, and IONIS. [sarcasm] Let me guess, $50,000 per dose MRNA vaccine that makes you immune to COVID, thanks for the grants suckers. [/sarcasm] This is something that really annoys me (obviously) and I think it would make a lot of sense if "any patents arising from research done with monies given by <x> will confer on <x> a lifetime perpetual non-exclusive right to use and re-license said patent on what ever terms they deem acceptable." It won't happen of course, but it should in my opinion.

Jalad 4y ago
I think it would make a lot of sense if "any patents arising from research done with monies given by <x> will confer on <x> a lifetime perpetual non-exclusive right to use and re-license said patent on what ever terms they deem acceptable." If this were implemented, wouldn't it just be the case that no one would take your money?
- ChuckMcM 4y ago
  Perhaps, I haven't been personally involved in a university lab looking for grant money so I don't know if they would turn down a grant if it required that any patentable work be also licensed to the grantor organization. And to be clear, I don't expect this situation to change any time soon. Just annoyed by it.
  - feet 4y ago
    Perhaps it would be worthwhile to understand the system you're criticizing a bit better before moving ahead and criticizing it
    - ChuckMcM 4y ago
      Perhaps. If you feel you have an understanding of the system I'm criticizing, why not help me understand why it has to be this way? I get it if you don't have the time or inclination to do so, but surprisingly I'm actually really open to learning new things and it would be appreciated not only by me but by other people reading your comments if you could explain the current system, perhaps other systems that have been tried and failed, and perhaps compare it with other systems (if they exist) that don't do it this way (giving the IP to the university even though it might be considered, by some less knowledgeable people, to be a 'work for hire.' Where it would seem that the agencies providing grants are doing the hiring. Always ready to listen an learn new things.
      - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
        well I don't really understand the system either, but there were multiple organizations making grants, so if you granted rights to all of them what rights would be left for you - that seems problematic. Also I suppose it was an expensive thing to do so they needed to get grants from multiple places, it seems like any recommendation to change this would be liable to have all sorts of side effects and, in the short term at least (5-10 years) likely to make the system function worse than it is now. Perhaps there is some negotiation already going on for grant moneys, I would expect so if any grants were sizable, I mean if I am giving you a million dollars to study something I might say before hand these are my requirements and you would probably say yes or no, but maybe some grants were much less in size and involved things like use of facilities. In those cases it would be much more likely to change your value estimation of the grant and maybe refuse because not worth it, but if not worth it less stuff gets made and at some point we are the things working worse than before because some researchers would be like screw this academic career I can just go be a quant somewhere. I mean as I understand it being a scientist is not exactly really rewarding https://www.zippia.com/scientist-jobs/salary/ https://www.zippia.com/scientist-jobs/salary/ so I would probably not want to do anything that made it potentially less (financially) rewarding because while people also do things for the good of humanity and so forth at some point when you're eating your Top Ramen with your disgusting room-mates maybe you might be tempted to change your life course for something with increased comfort.
wbl 4y ago
Why would Pfizer drop a few billion on getting the vaccine to market if the funders would then relicense it?
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  Because they could make more than $XB by selling it afterwards? Also, who's to say that Pfizer can't make an additional deal, or funding, for this effort?
  - junofan 4y ago
    How? What’s the incentive for Pfizer to fund development if they don’t get exclusivity?
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      You can't sell something without exclusivity now?
      - junofan 4y ago
        Who funds development? You can’t sell a product that does not exist.
        tsimionescu 4y ago
        You're going in circles. We were discussing a vaccine that was discovered with most funding coming from charities (B&M Gates foundation) or the state (NIH), and some by Pfizer. But, Pfizer gets to keep 100% of the results of this research. Now, if by "development" you mean the cost of mass manufacturing and marketing the substance, then every company that wants to manufacture it can find their own, which will be payed for by, you know, sales.
        junofan 4y ago
        Development means clinical testing, preparation and submission of applications for FDA approval, as well as design of production processes for new drugs. Here’s an accessible overview from the CBO: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57126 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57126
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
zaptrem 4y ago
Alternatively, why don't researchers just take investment in place of grants?
- neltnerb 4y ago
  Why not get both, I suppose..
- feet 4y ago
  Because that is a sign of bias in research
  - coldtea 4y ago
    That hasnt bothered modern researchers
- legutierr 4y ago
  If their research is of something that is attractive to investors, no doubt they will. Grants are often used to fund research that does not attract investment for whatever reason.
hkt 4y ago
I've always been confused about the arbitrary lengths of patents. Surely for something like this, six months or a year is fine? Enough time to get to market and make a considerable size of buck, but brief enough that a much needed thing that is subsidised by public money can be used as widely as possible. (Remember, philanthropic funds are often treated favourably for tax, so are, in a way, also public-ish money) On the other hand, you may have invented a novel type of hammock which is neat but has no social function, so, by all means have a quarter of a century of monopoly on that.
- ChuckMcM 4y ago
  Actually patents themselves don't have arbitrary length. They are 20 years and then done[1]. That said, there are patents on refinements or add-ons that come later, and so sometimes the patent expires but it has been replaced by a new way that is even better. There is a scheme in the pharmacy market for shifting patents to prevent generics from being produced, that scheme would be outlawed if we had the right mix of legislators in Congress (basically fewer people who are dependent on these pharmaceutical companies for campaign funds and PAC support). But the original patents do expire, the trick is convince folks that they don't do what they do as well as the new thing does what it does.See here[2] if you want the boring details. [1] I've got a bit over a dozen patents that arose out of work I've done for others and ended up becoming very familiar with them, even get the occasional expert witness work when trolls need to be disabused. [2] https://www.upcounsel.com/patents-in-pharmaceuticals https://www.upcounsel.com/patents-in-pharmaceuticals
  - retcore 4y ago
    The problem starts with the time between patent award and regulatory approval limiting the commercial exclusivity. This has driven big pharma to patent manufacturing processes instead of the compounds. If I understand it correctly from memory the Ritalin availability crisis was a example of process patent reengineering. Edit: was not is.
    - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
      There is a system called supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) that gives an extension you the monopoly period to account for regulatory approval periods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_protection_certificate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_protection_certi... (I haven't checked this link).
nyokodo 4y ago
> a lifetime perpetual non-exclusive right to use and re-license said patent on what ever terms they deem acceptable. Probably the biggest immediate positive impact would be automatically securing the rights to produce and distribute the patented good in developing nations. BigCo isn’t making much money there anyway.
- vletal 4y ago
  Economy of scale. You make little from a large population. Or you can go Nestle level evil and straight out exploit the most in need [1]. Plenty of ways for BigCo to make money of developing nations. [1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/The_Nestlé_Infant_Formula_Scandal https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/The_Nestlé_Inf...
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    Agree. See also: Suez Environnement
  - nyokodo 4y ago
    > Plenty of ways for BigCo to make money of developing nations. Making some money sure, but developing nations are not great consumer markets and BigCo isn’t making a big chunk of its profit there. It ought to be possible for BigCo to be made to accept the loss of a market they probably would neglect anyway (especially pharma) in exchange for R&D funding to give legal clearance for other organizations to serve those populations.
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  You wrote: <<automatically securing the rights to produce and distribute the patented good in developing nations>>. Real question for you and others: Where do we draw the line? That is an enormously complex question! I have an equivalent to discuss: During the COVID-19 crisis, I was bothered that the South Africa gov't was pushing so hard to get access to produce vaccines locally without paying patent licensing costs. (Without very advanced pharma manuf facils, it would be useless. Many people under estimate the complexity of producing these new mRNA vaccines, let alone distributing them safely and correctly.) South Africa is, by many measures, a middle income economy. They could absolutely affort 10-20 USD per citizen to vaccinate their population -- not so different than what EU paid for vaccines. Please do not interpret this post as "dumping on SA"!. I just want to discuss a very specific example. Related: The Serum Institute of India (which I think is the world's largest producer by vaccine doses) eventually secured a licenses to produce and sell vaccines. (Wiki tells me three were licensed [very impressive!]: AstraZeneca/Oxford, Novavax, and Russia's Gamaleya Sputnik V.) Does anyone know the details of SI's licensing agreements?
scatters 4y ago
This is an antibody, not a vaccine. It's for treating a single infection, not for conferring immunity.
- whoomp12342 4y ago
  how likely is it that this leads to some type of universal vaccine?
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    Not saying it's impossible, but I've never heard of it happening in that direction[0]. The immune system uses natural selection to randomly generate and amplify successful antibodies. It seems that the likelihood of generating exactly that antibody in the immunization process is astronomically low. [0] unless the lab-gnerated antibody is "seeing" a different part of the virus that the current vaccine doesn't see, in which case targeting the new spot in the virus is an obvious "next move".
- saveferris 4y ago
  I admittedly have no idea how it works, what the differences are but the article infers that the tech developed here can be used for vaccines. From the article: “If it does,” he added, “it might provide a new therapeutic and also contribute to new vaccine strategies.” Maybe you know, is this just for therapeutics and not vaccines? Edit: looks like someone else answered this below....
- ChuckMcM 4y ago
  Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here but what I took away from all of the papers on the MRNA vaccines is that they were designed to tell cells to build a protein (spike protein) that would stimulate the immune system to create an antibody that recognized said protein and it was those antibodies that made it harder to become infected with SARS-COVID-2. One of the papers I read compared and contrasted the antibody that Pfizer used in their development vs the one that Moderna used in their development, with the conclusion that the Moderna "provoked" antibody was slightly more effective at preventing an infection from taking hold. And based on that understanding (which may be flawed, please let me know if it is) then having a better 'target' antibody that you are trying to provoke the immune system to create, would make an MRNA vaccine more effective.
refurb 4y ago
You realize it take tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to get from this stage to an actual product and the chances of failure are 90%+? And you're mad because when the government funded 0.01% of the total cost of development you can't get it for free?
- JshWright 4y ago
  The government (or other non-profit entities) funded significantly more than 0.01% in this case. You’re not wrong that there’s still a ton of money required to get from “this works in a lab” to “this is something available at your local pharmacy”, but it’s not 4 orders of magnitude more… That’s also discounting the fact that they aren’t paying for all the projects that don’t make it to the “works in a lab” stage. That a significant chunk of risk that they aren’t exposed to.
  - refurb 4y ago
    It most certainly is several orders of magnitude. You can just look at the budget of the NIH versus private and corporate investment in drug development. What the government spends is a fraction of what private companies invest. To get a drug approved you're looking at $5k-$15k/person/year in a Phase 3 trial (depending on the monitoring needed). You can call up an CRO and ask for a quote. I did this several jobs ago. Just to give you a sense, the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine was 47,000 patients [1]. These patients were followed for 2 years. For a rough estimate, that's $5,000 x 47,000 x 2 years = $470M. Half a billion dollars, just for one clinical trial. That's already 3 orders of magnitude larger than a typical $500,000 grant for basic lab research like this paper. And that's just the clinical trials. It doesn't include the trials leading up to the pivotal trial, the manufacturing development costs, the health authority submissions costs across 130 countries, etc. Then add on top the cost to make the actual drug and put it in a vial and ship it around the world. And sure, "they aren’t paying for all the projects that don’t make it to the “works in a lab” stage". But conversely, the government never bears the risk for later development that fails. I remember Pfizer a couple decades ago spent $1B on a new manufacturing plant for a drug that never got approved. [1]https://www.pfizer.com/science/coronavirus/vaccine/about-our-landmark-trial https://www.pfizer.com/science/coronavirus/vaccine/about-our...

Jalad 4y ago

I think it would make a lot of sense if "any patents arising from research done with monies given by <x> will confer on <x> a lifetime perpetual non-exclusive right to use and re-license said patent on what ever terms they deem acceptable." If this were implemented, wouldn't it just be the case that no one would take your money?

ChuckMcM 4y ago
Perhaps, I haven't been personally involved in a university lab looking for grant money so I don't know if they would turn down a grant if it required that any patentable work be also licensed to the grantor organization. And to be clear, I don't expect this situation to change any time soon. Just annoyed by it.
- feet 4y ago
  Perhaps it would be worthwhile to understand the system you're criticizing a bit better before moving ahead and criticizing it
  - ChuckMcM 4y ago
    Perhaps. If you feel you have an understanding of the system I'm criticizing, why not help me understand why it has to be this way? I get it if you don't have the time or inclination to do so, but surprisingly I'm actually really open to learning new things and it would be appreciated not only by me but by other people reading your comments if you could explain the current system, perhaps other systems that have been tried and failed, and perhaps compare it with other systems (if they exist) that don't do it this way (giving the IP to the university even though it might be considered, by some less knowledgeable people, to be a 'work for hire.' Where it would seem that the agencies providing grants are doing the hiring. Always ready to listen an learn new things.
    - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
      well I don't really understand the system either, but there were multiple organizations making grants, so if you granted rights to all of them what rights would be left for you - that seems problematic. Also I suppose it was an expensive thing to do so they needed to get grants from multiple places, it seems like any recommendation to change this would be liable to have all sorts of side effects and, in the short term at least (5-10 years) likely to make the system function worse than it is now. Perhaps there is some negotiation already going on for grant moneys, I would expect so if any grants were sizable, I mean if I am giving you a million dollars to study something I might say before hand these are my requirements and you would probably say yes or no, but maybe some grants were much less in size and involved things like use of facilities. In those cases it would be much more likely to change your value estimation of the grant and maybe refuse because not worth it, but if not worth it less stuff gets made and at some point we are the things working worse than before because some researchers would be like screw this academic career I can just go be a quant somewhere. I mean as I understand it being a scientist is not exactly really rewarding https://www.zippia.com/scientist-jobs/salary/ https://www.zippia.com/scientist-jobs/salary/ so I would probably not want to do anything that made it potentially less (financially) rewarding because while people also do things for the good of humanity and so forth at some point when you're eating your Top Ramen with your disgusting room-mates maybe you might be tempted to change your life course for something with increased comfort.

wbl 4y ago

Why would Pfizer drop a few billion on getting the vaccine to market if the funders would then relicense it?

tsimionescu 4y ago
Because they could make more than $XB by selling it afterwards? Also, who's to say that Pfizer can't make an additional deal, or funding, for this effort?
- junofan 4y ago
  How? What’s the incentive for Pfizer to fund development if they don’t get exclusivity?
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    You can't sell something without exclusivity now?
    - junofan 4y ago
      Who funds development? You can’t sell a product that does not exist.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        You're going in circles. We were discussing a vaccine that was discovered with most funding coming from charities (B&M Gates foundation) or the state (NIH), and some by Pfizer. But, Pfizer gets to keep 100% of the results of this research. Now, if by "development" you mean the cost of mass manufacturing and marketing the substance, then every company that wants to manufacture it can find their own, which will be payed for by, you know, sales.
        junofan 4y ago
        Development means clinical testing, preparation and submission of applications for FDA approval, as well as design of production processes for new drugs. Here’s an accessible overview from the CBO: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57126 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57126

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

zaptrem 4y ago

Alternatively, why don't researchers just take investment in place of grants?

neltnerb 4y ago
Why not get both, I suppose..
feet 4y ago
Because that is a sign of bias in research
- coldtea 4y ago
  That hasnt bothered modern researchers
legutierr 4y ago
If their research is of something that is attractive to investors, no doubt they will. Grants are often used to fund research that does not attract investment for whatever reason.

hkt 4y ago

I've always been confused about the arbitrary lengths of patents. Surely for something like this, six months or a year is fine? Enough time to get to market and make a considerable size of buck, but brief enough that a much needed thing that is subsidised by public money can be used as widely as possible. (Remember, philanthropic funds are often treated favourably for tax, so are, in a way, also public-ish money) On the other hand, you may have invented a novel type of hammock which is neat but has no social function, so, by all means have a quarter of a century of monopoly on that.

ChuckMcM 4y ago
Actually patents themselves don't have arbitrary length. They are 20 years and then done[1]. That said, there are patents on refinements or add-ons that come later, and so sometimes the patent expires but it has been replaced by a new way that is even better. There is a scheme in the pharmacy market for shifting patents to prevent generics from being produced, that scheme would be outlawed if we had the right mix of legislators in Congress (basically fewer people who are dependent on these pharmaceutical companies for campaign funds and PAC support). But the original patents do expire, the trick is convince folks that they don't do what they do as well as the new thing does what it does.See here[2] if you want the boring details. [1] I've got a bit over a dozen patents that arose out of work I've done for others and ended up becoming very familiar with them, even get the occasional expert witness work when trolls need to be disabused. [2] https://www.upcounsel.com/patents-in-pharmaceuticals https://www.upcounsel.com/patents-in-pharmaceuticals
- retcore 4y ago
  The problem starts with the time between patent award and regulatory approval limiting the commercial exclusivity. This has driven big pharma to patent manufacturing processes instead of the compounds. If I understand it correctly from memory the Ritalin availability crisis was a example of process patent reengineering. Edit: was not is.
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    There is a system called supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) that gives an extension you the monopoly period to account for regulatory approval periods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_protection_certificate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_protection_certi... (I haven't checked this link).

nyokodo 4y ago

> a lifetime perpetual non-exclusive right to use and re-license said patent on what ever terms they deem acceptable. Probably the biggest immediate positive impact would be automatically securing the rights to produce and distribute the patented good in developing nations. BigCo isn’t making much money there anyway.

vletal 4y ago
Economy of scale. You make little from a large population. Or you can go Nestle level evil and straight out exploit the most in need [1]. Plenty of ways for BigCo to make money of developing nations. [1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/The_Nestlé_Infant_Formula_Scandal https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/The_Nestlé_Inf...
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  Agree. See also: Suez Environnement
- nyokodo 4y ago
  > Plenty of ways for BigCo to make money of developing nations. Making some money sure, but developing nations are not great consumer markets and BigCo isn’t making a big chunk of its profit there. It ought to be possible for BigCo to be made to accept the loss of a market they probably would neglect anyway (especially pharma) in exchange for R&D funding to give legal clearance for other organizations to serve those populations.
throwaway2037 4y ago
You wrote: <<automatically securing the rights to produce and distribute the patented good in developing nations>>. Real question for you and others: Where do we draw the line? That is an enormously complex question! I have an equivalent to discuss: During the COVID-19 crisis, I was bothered that the South Africa gov't was pushing so hard to get access to produce vaccines locally without paying patent licensing costs. (Without very advanced pharma manuf facils, it would be useless. Many people under estimate the complexity of producing these new mRNA vaccines, let alone distributing them safely and correctly.) South Africa is, by many measures, a middle income economy. They could absolutely affort 10-20 USD per citizen to vaccinate their population -- not so different than what EU paid for vaccines. Please do not interpret this post as "dumping on SA"!. I just want to discuss a very specific example. Related: The Serum Institute of India (which I think is the world's largest producer by vaccine doses) eventually secured a licenses to produce and sell vaccines. (Wiki tells me three were licensed [very impressive!]: AstraZeneca/Oxford, Novavax, and Russia's Gamaleya Sputnik V.) Does anyone know the details of SI's licensing agreements?

scatters 4y ago

This is an antibody, not a vaccine. It's for treating a single infection, not for conferring immunity.

whoomp12342 4y ago
how likely is it that this leads to some type of universal vaccine?
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  Not saying it's impossible, but I've never heard of it happening in that direction[0]. The immune system uses natural selection to randomly generate and amplify successful antibodies. It seems that the likelihood of generating exactly that antibody in the immunization process is astronomically low. [0] unless the lab-gnerated antibody is "seeing" a different part of the virus that the current vaccine doesn't see, in which case targeting the new spot in the virus is an obvious "next move".
saveferris 4y ago
I admittedly have no idea how it works, what the differences are but the article infers that the tech developed here can be used for vaccines. From the article: “If it does,” he added, “it might provide a new therapeutic and also contribute to new vaccine strategies.” Maybe you know, is this just for therapeutics and not vaccines? Edit: looks like someone else answered this below....
ChuckMcM 4y ago
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here but what I took away from all of the papers on the MRNA vaccines is that they were designed to tell cells to build a protein (spike protein) that would stimulate the immune system to create an antibody that recognized said protein and it was those antibodies that made it harder to become infected with SARS-COVID-2. One of the papers I read compared and contrasted the antibody that Pfizer used in their development vs the one that Moderna used in their development, with the conclusion that the Moderna "provoked" antibody was slightly more effective at preventing an infection from taking hold. And based on that understanding (which may be flawed, please let me know if it is) then having a better 'target' antibody that you are trying to provoke the immune system to create, would make an MRNA vaccine more effective.

refurb 4y ago

You realize it take tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to get from this stage to an actual product and the chances of failure are 90%+? And you're mad because when the government funded 0.01% of the total cost of development you can't get it for free?

JshWright 4y ago
The government (or other non-profit entities) funded significantly more than 0.01% in this case. You’re not wrong that there’s still a ton of money required to get from “this works in a lab” to “this is something available at your local pharmacy”, but it’s not 4 orders of magnitude more… That’s also discounting the fact that they aren’t paying for all the projects that don’t make it to the “works in a lab” stage. That a significant chunk of risk that they aren’t exposed to.
- refurb 4y ago
  It most certainly is several orders of magnitude. You can just look at the budget of the NIH versus private and corporate investment in drug development. What the government spends is a fraction of what private companies invest. To get a drug approved you're looking at $5k-$15k/person/year in a Phase 3 trial (depending on the monitoring needed). You can call up an CRO and ask for a quote. I did this several jobs ago. Just to give you a sense, the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine was 47,000 patients [1]. These patients were followed for 2 years. For a rough estimate, that's $5,000 x 47,000 x 2 years = $470M. Half a billion dollars, just for one clinical trial. That's already 3 orders of magnitude larger than a typical $500,000 grant for basic lab research like this paper. And that's just the clinical trials. It doesn't include the trials leading up to the pivotal trial, the manufacturing development costs, the health authority submissions costs across 130 countries, etc. Then add on top the cost to make the actual drug and put it in a vial and ship it around the world. And sure, "they aren’t paying for all the projects that don’t make it to the “works in a lab” stage". But conversely, the government never bears the risk for later development that fails. I remember Pfizer a couple decades ago spent $1B on a new manufacturing plant for a drug that never got approved. [1]https://www.pfizer.com/science/coronavirus/vaccine/about-our-landmark-trial https://www.pfizer.com/science/coronavirus/vaccine/about-our...