A small German biotech company is suing Moderna for infringing its mRNA patents in the Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine. We dig into the vaccine race, the money behind the science, and what this legal battle means for the future of medicine.
Una pequeña empresa alemana de biotecnología demanda a Moderna por infringir sus patentes de ARNm en la vacuna Spikevax contra el COVID-19. Hablamos de la carrera por las vacunas, el dinero detrás de la ciencia, y lo que esta batalla legal significa para el futuro de la medicina.
6 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| patentar | to patent | La empresa quería patentar su tecnología antes de publicar los resultados. |
| ensayo clínico | clinical trial | Los ensayos clínicos mostraron que la vacuna era muy efectiva. |
| eficacia | efficacy / effectiveness | La eficacia de esta vacuna es del 94 por ciento. |
| demandar | to sue / to take legal action | La empresa pequeña decidió demandar a su competidor más grande. |
| nanopartícula | nanoparticle | Las nanopartículas lipídicas transportan el ARNm al interior de las células. |
| propiedad intelectual | intellectual property | La propiedad intelectual protege los inventos y las ideas originales. |
There's a lawsuit that landed this week that I think most people completely missed, and honestly it touches something I've been thinking about since the pandemic.
A German biotech company called CureVac is suing Moderna.
The claim is that Moderna's COVID vaccine, Spikevax, infringes CureVac's patents on mRNA technology.
Sí, y esta historia es importante porque no es solo una pelea legal entre dos empresas.
Yes, and this story matters because it's not just a legal fight between two companies.
Es una pregunta sobre quién inventó realmente esta tecnología, y quién ganó el dinero.
It's a question about who actually invented this technology, and who made the money.
Right.
And the numbers make your eyes water.
Moderna made somewhere around twenty billion dollars from Spikevax during the pandemic.
CureVac, meanwhile, had their own mRNA vaccine fail in clinical trials and watched from the sidelines.
CureVac es una empresa de Tubinga, en Alemania.
CureVac is a company from Tübingen, in Germany.
Trabaja con la tecnología de ARNm desde el año 2000.
It has been working with mRNA technology since the year 2000.
Mucho tiempo antes de que Moderna o Pfizer fueran famosas.
Long before Moderna or Pfizer were famous.
So CureVac was in this field for over two decades before anyone outside a laboratory had heard of mRNA vaccines.
That's the detail that keeps pulling at me.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Pero primero, para los oyentes, es necesario explicar qué es el ARNm.
But first, for the listeners, we need to explain what mRNA is.
Es una tecnología muy interesante y no es fácil de entender.
It's a very interesting technology and it's not easy to understand.
Please, yes.
Give me the version I can actually follow, because I've read three explanations and I still feel like I'm guessing.
Bien.
Okay.
Normalmente, una vacuna tradicional usa una parte del virus, o un virus muerto, para enseñar al cuerpo cómo defenderse.
Normally, a traditional vaccine uses a part of the virus, or a dead virus, to teach the body how to defend itself.
Pero el ARNm es diferente.
But mRNA is different.
Le da instrucciones a las células del cuerpo para que produzcan una proteína.
It gives instructions to the body's cells to produce a protein.
El cuerpo la ve y aprende a atacarla.
The body sees it and learns to attack it.
So instead of showing the body the enemy directly, you give the body a recipe and let it build the target itself.
Which, when you put it that way, sounds almost absurd that it works.
Sí, pero funciona muy bien.
Yes, but it works very well.
Y la ventaja es que es mucho más rápido producir estas vacunas.
And the advantage is that it's much faster to produce these vaccines.
Con el COVID, Moderna y BioNTech crearon sus vacunas en meses, no en años.
With COVID, Moderna and BioNTech created their vaccines in months, not years.
Which felt miraculous at the time and, I'll admit, made a lot of people suspicious.
Fourteen months from a novel pathogen to a deployed vaccine.
In normal circumstances that takes a decade.
La ciencia no fue nueva.
The science wasn't new.
La tecnología de ARNm existía desde los años 90.
mRNA technology existed since the 1990s.
Los científicos trabajaron en ella durante décadas sin mucho dinero ni apoyo.
Scientists worked on it for decades without much money or support.
El COVID fue el primer momento en que el mundo necesitó esta tecnología urgentemente.
COVID was the first moment the world urgently needed this technology.
And that's where the story of CureVac gets interesting, because they were one of the organizations quietly building this for years.
Founded in 2000, out of the University of Tübingen, and for most of their existence they were basically invisible to the general public.
CureVac llegó a ser famosa en 2020, pero no por sus vacunas.
CureVac became famous in 2020, but not for its vaccines.
En marzo de 2020, los periódicos alemanes dijeron que el gobierno de Trump intentó comprar la empresa para tener el acceso exclusivo a su tecnología.
In March 2020, German newspapers reported that the Trump government tried to buy the company to have exclusive access to its technology.
Solo para Estados Unidos.
Just for the United States.
I remember that story.
The German government was furious.
Angela Merkel's office had to deny it publicly.
The Trump administration never fully confirmed or denied, which was its own kind of answer.
Fue un momento muy interesante.
It was a very interesting moment.
Mostró que los gobiernos entendían que esta tecnología era muy importante.
It showed that governments understood that this technology was very important.
No solo para el COVID, sino para el futuro de la medicina.
Not just for COVID, but for the future of medicine.
So CureVac survives that episode, the German government backs them, and then they enter the vaccine race.
They're developing their own mRNA COVID vaccine, CVnCoV.
And this is where things get painful for them.
Su vacuna falló.
Their vaccine failed.
En los ensayos clínicos de fase tres, la eficacia fue solo del 47 por ciento.
In phase three clinical trials, the efficacy was only 47 percent.
Pfizer y Moderna tenían una eficacia de casi el 95 por ciento.
Pfizer and Moderna had efficacy of almost 95 percent.
Para una vacuna, el 47 por ciento no es suficiente.
For a vaccine, 47 percent is not enough.
And 47 percent is the number that ends the dream.
Because the FDA requires at least 50 percent efficacy as a minimum threshold for emergency authorization, and CureVac came in just below that.
Sí.
Yes.
Fue un desastre para la empresa.
It was a disaster for the company.
Las acciones cayeron mucho.
Shares fell a lot.
Y al mismo tiempo, Moderna ganaba miles de millones de dólares con una tecnología que CureVac dice que es, en parte, suya.
And at the same time, Moderna was earning billions of dollars with a technology that CureVac says is, in part, theirs.
That has to sting in a particular way.
You spend twenty years building the foundational science, you lose the race by a few percentage points, and the company that wins is using, you claim, your patents to do it.
CureVac ya demandó a Moderna en 2022.
CureVac already sued Moderna in 2022.
Pero ahora añadió más acusaciones.
But now they've added more accusations.
Dicen que Moderna usó sus patentes para el ARNm modificado y para el sistema de entrega de la vacuna, las nanopartículas lipídicas.
They say Moderna used their patents for the modified mRNA and for the vaccine's delivery system, the lipid nanoparticles.
Lipid nanoparticles.
That's the thing I always skip over when I read about this.
Those are essentially the little fat bubbles that protect the mRNA molecule and carry it into your cells, right?
Exactamente.
Exactly.
El ARNm solo no puede entrar en las células fácilmente.
mRNA alone can't easily enter cells.
Las nanopartículas lipídicas son como un vehículo, como un taxi para la molécula.
The lipid nanoparticles are like a vehicle, like a taxi for the molecule.
Y ese sistema también está en las patentes que CureVac reclama.
And that system is also in the patents that CureVac is claiming.
Moderna's defense, broadly, has been that their technology was developed independently.
And that argument actually has some credibility, because mRNA research wasn't happening in one place.
Multiple groups were working on similar problems simultaneously.
Sí, y eso es normal en la ciencia.
Yes, and that's normal in science.
Muchas veces, diferentes científicos llegan a las mismas ideas al mismo tiempo porque trabajan con la misma información.
Often, different scientists arrive at the same ideas at the same time because they work with the same information.
Pero las patentes no funcionan así.
But patents don't work that way.
Las patentes premian a quien llega primero.
Patents reward whoever arrives first.
Which is one of the oldest tensions in intellectual property law.
The system was designed to incentivize innovation by giving inventors a temporary monopoly.
But when multiple people independently invent the same thing, the system starts to look almost arbitrary.
Y en la industria farmacéutica, las patentes son enormemente importantes porque el desarrollo de medicamentos cuesta cientos de millones de euros.
And in the pharmaceutical industry, patents are enormously important because drug development costs hundreds of millions of euros.
Las empresas necesitan proteger su inversión durante años para ganar dinero.
Companies need to protect their investment for years in order to make money.
The flip side of which is that the patents also determine who can make the medicine and at what price.
And during the pandemic, that became a genuinely life-or-death question for people in lower-income countries who couldn't access the vaccines.
Recuerdo bien ese debate.
I remember that debate well.
India y Sudáfrica pidieron a la Organización Mundial del Comercio que suspendiera las patentes de las vacunas COVID temporalmente.
India and South Africa asked the World Trade Organization to temporarily suspend the COVID vaccine patents.
Muchos países ricos dijeron que no.
Many rich countries said no.
Fue una discusión muy difícil.
It was a very difficult discussion.
And the United States, to its credit, eventually supported a limited waiver.
But it came late, and the implementation was incomplete.
That history is the backdrop to this CureVac lawsuit, because there's still enormous resentment about who profited from the pandemic.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Pero también hay algo más importante en este caso.
But there's also something more important in this case.
Si CureVac gana, el mensaje para la industria es muy claro: las empresas pequeñas con buenas patentes pueden competir con las grandes.
If CureVac wins, the message for the industry is very clear: small companies with good patents can compete with the big ones.
Eso es muy importante para la innovación.
That is very important for innovation.
There's something almost David-and-Goliath about it.
CureVac has a market cap of maybe two hundred million dollars at this point.
Moderna is worth forty-something billion.
These are not equivalent combatants.
Sí, pero CureVac tiene algo muy valioso: las patentes originales.
Yes, but CureVac has something very valuable: the original patents.
Y en los tribunales europeos, estas patentes pueden ser muy fuertes.
And in European courts, these patents can be very strong.
CureVac ya ganó algunos casos preliminares contra Moderna en Alemania.
CureVac already won some preliminary cases against Moderna in Germany.
Which explains why this fight keeps going.
And it matters enormously for what comes next, because mRNA is not just a COVID technology.
The same platform is now being developed for cancer vaccines, for HIV, for influenza.
Whoever controls the patents controls the future.
Las vacunas contra el cáncer de ARNm son increíbles.
mRNA cancer vaccines are incredible.
Moderna y BioNTech trabajan en vacunas personalizadas para tratar tumores.
Moderna and BioNTech are working on personalized vaccines to treat tumors.
La idea es crear una vacuna para cada paciente, específica para su cáncer.
The idea is to create a vaccine for each patient, specific to their cancer.
No existía esto hace diez años.
This didn't exist ten years ago.
A personalized cancer vaccine.
I keep having to remind myself that's real and not science fiction.
And now the legal question of who actually owns the underlying technology becomes worth, potentially, hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few decades.
Por eso esta demanda es tan importante.
That's why this lawsuit is so important.
No es solo sobre Spikevax o sobre el pasado.
It's not just about Spikevax or about the past.
Es sobre quién controla una de las tecnologías más importantes del siglo veintiuno.
It's about who controls one of the most important technologies of the twenty-first century.
And the irony, the painful irony for CureVac, is that they might win the legal war while having already lost the commercial war.
Even if they get damages, they won't get back the years they spent building something that someone else profited from at scale.
Oye, Fletcher, hay algo en esta historia que me parece interesante lingüísticamente.
Hey, Fletcher, there's something in this story that I find linguistically interesting.
Cuando hablé de la vacuna fallida de CureVac, usé la palabra "eficacia".
When I talked about CureVac's failed vaccine, I used the word 'eficacia'.
¿Sabes cuál es la diferencia entre "eficacia" y "eficiencia" en español?
Do you know what the difference is between 'eficacia' and 'eficiencia' in Spanish?
Honestly?
I assumed they were basically the same.
Like "efficacy" and "efficiency" in English, where we kind of use them interchangeably even though technically they're different.
No son iguales.
They're not the same.
"Eficacia" es lograr el resultado que quieres.
'Eficacia' is achieving the result you want.
La vacuna tiene una eficacia del 95 por ciento: produce el resultado correcto.
The vaccine has 95 percent efficacy: it produces the correct result.
"Eficiencia" es lograr algo usando pocos recursos, sin desperdiciar.
'Eficiencia' is achieving something using few resources, without waste.
Una empresa puede ser eficiente, pero no eficaz, si trabaja rápido pero no consigue su objetivo.
A company can be efficient but not effective, if it works quickly but doesn't reach its goal.
So CureVac was, arguably, quite efficient, given how lean they ran for twenty years.
But their vaccine was not efficacious enough.
You could use both words about them and both would be accurate.
[chuckle] Sí, exactamente.
Yes, exactly.
Y en el contexto médico, siempre usamos "eficacia".
And in the medical context, we always use 'eficacia'.
Los médicos no dicen que una medicina es "eficiente".
Doctors don't say a medicine is 'efficient'.
Dicen que es "eficaz" o que "no es eficaz".
They say it is 'effective' or that it 'is not effective'.
Es una distinción pequeña pero importante.
It's a small but important distinction.
Filed away.
And maybe a useful reminder that Spanish, like this lawsuit, rewards the people who paid attention to the details all along.
Thanks for that, Octavio.
Same time next week.