Pfizer used technologies developed by another company in its COVID-19 vaccine, infringing on patents, according to a new lawsuit.
The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine uses lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology that was developed and patented by Arbutus Biopharma, Arbutus alleges in the new suit, filed on April 4 in U.S. court in New Jersey.
“When the world was thrust into a devastating pandemic and urgently needed LNP technologies to deliver an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine to cells in the body, the necessary LNP technologies had, fortunately, already been invented by Arbutus’s scientists years before and stood ready for use. Defendants could not have accomplished the feat of creating and manufacturing a vaccine at a speed unprecedented in the history of medicine but for their use of Plaintiffs’ existing and proven LNP technologies,” the suit states….