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 adcomm of outside vaccine experts will meet tomorrow to discuss how to protect the US from a likely coming wave of Omicron cases in the fall and winter, and whether to deploy vaccines that specifically target the Omicron variant.

While the data so far are limited, the FDA sounded an upbeat tone in the briefing documents on Pfizer/BioNTech’s candidates, released this weekend ahead of the VRBPAC meeting.

Ireland has been on a roll in 2022, with several large pharma companies announcing multimillion-euro projects. Now AstraZeneca’s rare disease outfit Alexion is looking to get in on the action.

Alexion on Friday announced a €65 million ($68.8 million) investment in new and enhanced capabilities across two sites in the country, including at College Park in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown and the Monksland Industrial Park in the central Irish town of Athlone, according to the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland.

Another biotech standing on shaky financial legs has fallen victim to the bears.

Merck partner 4D Pharma has reported that a key lender, Oxford Finance, shoved the UK company into administration after calling in a $14 million loan they couldn’t immediately make good on. Trading in their stock was halted with a market cap that had fallen to a mere £30 million.

“Despite the very difficult prevailing market conditions,” 4D reported on Friday, the biotech had been making progress on finding some new financing and turned to Oxford with an alternative late on Thursday and then again Friday morning.

Amidst recently broader vaccine manufacturing initiatives from the EU and European companies, the G7 summit in the mountains of Bavaria has brought about some positive news for closing vaccine and medical product manufacturing gaps around the globe.

According to a statement from the White House, the G7 leaders have formally launched the partnership for global infrastructure, PGII. The effort will aim to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to deliver infrastructure projects in several sectors including the medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing space.

Some Celgene shareholders aren’t happy with how Bristol Myers Squibb’s takeover went down.

On Friday, a New York federal judge ruled that they have a case against the pharma giant, denying a request to dismiss allegations that it purposely slow-rolled Breyanzi’s approval to avoid paying out $6.4 billion in contingent value rights (CVR).

When Bristol Myers put down $74 billion to scoop up Celgene back in 2019, liso-cel — the CAR-T lymphoma treatment now marketed as Breyanzi — was supposedly one of the centerpieces of the deal. After going back and forth on negotiations for about six months, BMS put $6.4 billion into a CVR agreement that required an FDA approval for Zeposia, Breyanzi and Abecma, each by an established date.