The NIH is stand­ing by its as­ser­tion that three of its sci­en­tists should be list­ed in the Mod­er­na patent for the com­pa­ny’s lu­cra­tive Covid-19 vac­cine.

The spat is part of an on­go­ing feud be­tween the US gov­ern­ment and Mod­er­na that spilled in­to pub­lic view last month when one of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s top med­ical ad­vi­sors called out the com­pa­ny for fail­ing to de­liv­er on its promise to vac­ci­nate more low- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries.

“I think Mod­er­na has made a se­ri­ous mis­take here in not pro­vid­ing the kind of co-in­ven­tor­ship cred­it to the peo­ple who played a ma­jor role in the de­vel­op­ment of the vac­cine that they are now mak­ing a fair amount of mon­ey on. We did our best to try to re­solve this and ul­ti­mate­ly failed but we are not done,” NIH Di­rec­tor Fran­cis Collins told Reuters in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

An NIH spokesper­son clar­i­fied that Collins de­fers to le­gal au­thor­i­ties on how this patent sna­fu might be re­solved. And he said there are gov­ern­ment lawyers look­ing in­to this right now.

The prospect of a po­ten­tial law­suit from the NIH would be an in­ter­est­ing shift for an agency that has al­ways steered clear of ex­er­cis­ing its so-called “march-in” rights, which hy­po­thet­i­cal­ly would al­low the NIH to chal­lenge patents where the gov­ern­ment has helped fund de­vel­op­ment.

The NIH told the New York Times ear­li­er this week that three of its sci­en­tists — John Mas­co­la, Bar­ney Gra­ham, who re­cent­ly re­tired, and Kizzmekia Cor­bett, who has since moved over to Har­vard — worked with Mod­er­na to de­sign the ge­net­ic se­quence that prompts the vac­cine to pro­duce an im­mune re­sponse.

While the NIH be­lieves these three should be on the patent ap­pli­ca­tion, Mod­er­na’s fil­ing from this sum­mer on­ly names the biotech’s em­ploy­ees, and the com­pa­ny said it had “reached the good-faith de­ter­mi­na­tion that these in­di­vid­u­als did not co-in­vent” the com­po­nent in ques­tion, ac­cord­ing to the Times.

The NIH’s anger with Mod­er­na comes as the com­pa­ny has ac­cept­ed bil­lions from US tax­pay­ers to de­vel­op its vac­cine and en­rich its ex­ec­u­tives, to the point where a few are bil­lion­aires now. Mod­er­na will like­ly haul in tens of bil­lions in more sales from the vac­cine over the next two years.

The FDA’s Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee will meet next Tuesday to discuss whether Cytokinetics’ potential heart drug can safely reduce the risk of cardiovascular death and heart failure in patients with symptomatic chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction.

The drug, known as omecamtiv mecarbil and in development for more than 15 years, has seen mixed results, with a first Phase III readout from November 2020 hitting the primary endpoint of reducing the odds of hospitalization or other urgent care for heart failure by 8%. But it also missed a key secondary endpoint analysts had pegged as key to breaking into the market.

Add AbbVie to the list of pharma companies currently facing age discrimination allegations.

Pennsylvania resident Thomas Hesch filed suit against AbbVie on Wednesday, accusing the company of passing him over for promotions in favor of younger candidates.

Despite 30 years of pharma experience, “Hesch has consistently seen younger, less qualified employees promoted over him,” the complaint states.

The first batch of pivotal data on Autolus Therapeutics’ CAR-T is in, and execs are ready to plot a path to market.

With an overall remission rate of 70% at the interim analysis featuring 50 patients, the results set the stage for a BLA filing by the end of 2023, said CEO Christian Itin.

Perhaps more importantly — given that Autolus’ drug, obe-cel, is going after an indication that Gilead’s Tecartus is already approved for — the biotech highlighted “encouraging safety data” in the trial, with a low percentage of patients experiencing severe immune responses.