Moderna sues Pfizer and BioNTech over COVID-19 vaccine

One patent in question has to do with a modification to the mRNA delivered in the vaccine. A big hurdle in creating mRNA medicines was that the immune system would destroy the mRNA before it could act, Moderna describes in the complaint. The structure of 1-Methylpseudouridine. Four different units, called nucleosides, make up mRNA. Moderna says it discovered that swapping out one of them, uridine, with 1-methylpseudouridine resulted in better protein production than previous modification attempts and diminished the problematic immune response. Moderna says it patented this research and that Pfizer and BioNTech used the same modification.