A Chinese scientist in California had been secretly passing confidential mRNA cancer vaccine research to her husband to benefit his lab in China, a federal agent alleged in a recently filed criminal complaint. For about five years, Chen Lianchun, who resides in San Diego, had been sending documents from her employer that were marked confidential to her husband Wu Chenyan, who ran a biotech laboratory in China, according to the complaint, filed at the Southern California district court on Dec. 8. Chen’s work as a bench scientist performing early-stage mRNA cancer research would be “extremely useful” in leapfrogging Wu’s project developing a generic mRNA vaccine, a representative from Chen’s employer told the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), the court document said. Chen’s employer was not named in the filing. Wu got the FBI’s attention as early as December 2019, when his name appeared on a PowerPoint presentation on the phone …