Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk gestures to the audience after being recognized by President Trump following the successful launch of a Falcon 9 rocket at the Kennedy Space Center. (via Getty Images)

Tes­la chief Elon Musk teams up with Covid-19 play­er Cure­Vac to build 'R­NA mi­cro­fac­to­ries'

Elon Musk has joined the glob­al tech cru­sade now un­der­way to rev­o­lu­tion­ize vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ing — now aimed at de­liv­er­ing bil­lions of dos­es of a new mR­NA vac­cine to fight Covid-19. And he’s cut­ting right to the front.

In a late-night tweet Wednes­day, the Tes­la chief an­nounced:

Tes­la, as a side project, is build­ing RNA mi­cro­fac­to­ries for Cure­Vac & pos­si­bly oth­ers.

That’s not a lot to go on. But the tweet comes a year af­ter Tes­la’s Ger­man di­vi­sion in Grohmann and Cure­Vac filed a patent on a “biore­ac­tor for RNA in vit­ro tran­scrip­tion, a method for RNA in vit­ro tran­scrip­tion, a mod­ule for tran­scrib­ing DNA in­to RNA and an au­to­mat­ed ap­pa­ra­tus for RNA man­u­fac­tur­ing.” Cure­Vac, in the mean­time, has dis­cussed a va­ri­ety of plans to build mi­cro­fac­to­ries that can speed up the whole process for a glob­al sup­ply chain.

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