The US fed­er­al gov­ern­ment’s con­tri­bu­tions to re­search on Gilead’s Covid-19 an­tivi­ral drug remde­sivir did not re­sult in any patent rights be­cause the re­search did not cre­ate new in­ven­tions, the Gov­ern­ment Ac­count­abil­i­ty Of­fice said in a re­port on Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

The re­port set­tles a long­stand­ing dis­pute over whether the gov­ern­ment might be co-in­ven­tors of remde­sivir, which has lin­gered since be­fore for­mer Cal­i­for­nia at­tor­ney gen­er­al Xavier Be­cer­ra (who’s now Biden’s HHS sec­re­tary) led a group of oth­er AGs last sum­mer in call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to in­ter­vene and low­er the more than $3,000 price tag for remde­sivir be­cause of the gov­ern­ment’s sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to remde­sivir.

The GAO re­port ac­knowl­edges that be­tween 2013 and 2020, the gov­ern­ment pumped $162 mil­lion in­to the de­vel­op­ment of remde­sivir, with the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC), the De­part­ment of De­fense (DOD), and the Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health (NIH) con­duct­ing and fund­ing pre­clin­i­cal re­search. In ad­di­tion, NIH fund­ed three remde­sivir clin­i­cal tri­als, in­clud­ing the one show­ing that the an­tivi­ral short­ened the re­cov­ery time for hos­pi­tal­ized pa­tients with se­vere Covid-19.

Gilead, how­ev­er, al­so con­duct­ed its own re­search that led to the in­ven­tion of remde­sivir and the com­pa­ny said it in­vest­ed $786 mil­lion in remde­sivir R&D from 2000 through De­cem­ber 2020, GAO says. Gilead added in a state­ment that its in­vest­ment in remde­sivir ex­ceed­ed $1 bil­lion in 2020 alone and that cur­rent­ly about half of all hos­pi­tal­ized pa­tients with Covid-19 in the US are treat­ed with the drug.

DOD, NIH and oth­er sci­en­tists at Van­der­bilt and the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill ac­knowl­edged to GAO that their sci­en­tists were not co-in­ven­tors of patent­ed remde­sivir dis­cov­er­ies. For in­stance, NIH of­fi­cials told the GAO that Gilead be­gan patent­ing meth­ods of us­ing remde­sivir to treat coro­n­avirus in­fec­tions in 2015, while NIH sci­en­tists be­gan their remde­sivir re­search fo­cus­ing on coro­n­avirus­es in 2016.

“The prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tors of NIH-fund­ed coro­n­avirus re­search projects told us that they did not con­sid­er fil­ing in­ven­tion dis­clo­sures be­cause their re­search did not in­volve mak­ing any mod­i­fi­ca­tions to remde­sivir or its par­ent com­pounds. The prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tors stat­ed that they viewed such mod­i­fi­ca­tions as the thresh­old for fil­ing such dis­clo­sures,” GAO said.

And even if the gov­ern­ment had filed for a remde­sivir method-of-use patent, DOD and NIH of­fi­cials said that would be of low eco­nom­ic val­ue be­cause the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment did not own the com­pound patents and would have had to li­cense those patents from Gilead if it want­ed to com­mer­cial­ize the method of use or li­cense it to an­oth­er com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to CDC of­fi­cials, as of last month, they said it was “un­like­ly that CDC would con­duct an in­ven­tor­ship analy­sis or pur­sue in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights giv­en Gilead’s back­ground in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and the lim­it­ed po­ten­tial for CDC to li­cense any such rights.”

Chris Morten, a lawyer who cur­rent­ly teach­es at New York Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law, not­ed that the re­port did not clar­i­fy if a CDC sci­en­tist, Michael Lo, co-in­vent­ed Gilead’s remde­sivir com­pound patents, and if so, “CDC would, un­der the de­fault rules of patent law, have a claim to co-own­er­ship. But CDC ap­pears un­in­ter­est­ed in pur­su­ing its le­gal rights.”

The EMA is putting EU member states on alert over the shortage of two drugs that counter heart attacks due to an uptick in demand.

On Friday, the EMA sent out a warning that two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs are experiencing a shortage: Actilyse and Metalyse. The drugs are used as emergency treatments for adults experiencing acute myocardial infarction, or a heart attack, by dissolving blood clots that have formed in the blood vessels.

Fujifilm’s CDMO arm, Fujifilm Diosynth, has been on a roll this month as the company has recently broken ground on a major project in Europe and it appears to be keeping up the momentum.

Fujifilm Diosynth announced that it has kicked off an expansion project for its microbial manufacturing facility at its campus in the town of Billingham, UK, in the northeast of England.

The 20,000 square-foot, £400 million ($435 million) expansion will add clean rooms, purification suites and a packing area along with more space for the manufacturing itself.