Read on Twitter
Totally disingenuous argument from the CEO of @moderna_tx. Tech transfer for mRNA vaccines works to rapidly scale up production, even when there is no available manufacturing capacity. How do we know? This is the exact approach Moderna *itself* used to scale their production
Let's start from the beginning. On January 23, 2020, Moderna got $65 million from the non-profit @CEPIvaccines to produce a small amount of doses to test the COVID vaccine they developed with @NIH in phase 1 trials. https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-funding-award-cepi-accelerate-development
Moderna, at this point is a small biotech. It has no commercial scale mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, there actually is none in the world at this pt. Its Norwood, MA facility can only basically make doses at the clinical trial scale. From 2 Mar 2020.: https://www.modernatx.com/moderna-blog/moderna-manufacturing-why-norwood
So on 16 April 2020 US taxpayers give Moderna $483 million to build factories to produce the Moderna/NIH COVID-19 vaccine. While Moderna itself begins building some capacity, it figures out that there is a faster way to build commercial scale capacity. https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-award-us-government-agency-barda-483-million
On 1 May 2020 the company enlists @LonzaGroup, a Swiss company, to begin making vaccine drug substance on Moderna's behalf. @LonzaGroup begins rapidly retrofitting two existing plants in Switzerland and New Hampshire to do this. https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-and-lonza-announce-worldwide-strategic-collaboration
At the core of this scale up process is the exact thing activists want -- technology transfer. Remember before summer of 2020, Lonza had never made a mRNA therapeutic. But with tech transfer from Moderna, the company was able to make the first doses within 2 months of the deal.
The first commercial scale plant to come online was Lonza's facility in Portsmouth, NH. Remember before May, this facility had NO mRNA production capability. But by Dec 31, 2020, it had produced 20 million doses of the Moderna/NIH vaccine! https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/lonza-is-expected-to-make-100-million-doses-of-the-moderna-covid-19-coronavirus-vaccine-in-new-hampshire/97-b8d4246c-acb4-4d8e-9186-23abe15851c0
So Lonza, working with Moderna, through technology transfer was able to retrofit an existing factory, starting in June 2020, and by Dec, that plant came online, and had produced enough doses for 10 million people. That is 7 months from start of tech transfer to 20 million doses.
We have seen a lot of confusion from even senior people, like Tony Fauci, who falsely claimed that tech transfer would take longer than 12 months to just start producing doses. https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1389736818011168772?s=21
Tech transfer works, it worked for Moderna and it could work to further expand production of the Moderna/NIH vaccine for the world.
If you would to read our plan for global production scale up of mRNA scale up, read it here: https://www.prep4all.org/news/hit-hard-hit-fast-hit-globally
