Penn officials said they are plowing the money back into early-stage scientific research.
The University of Pennsylvania has reaped extraordinary financial gain from COVID-19 vaccines — approaching $1 billion since the beginning of last year — thanks to patents on a processPenn will use the proceeds for a $750 million expansion of scientific and medical research in Philadelphia, where it is already the main driver of a. Those plans include a $350 million addition of laboratory space.
No one knew where the discovery would lead. In an Aug. 23, 2005, news release, Penn said the “findings couldThe years that followed are sometimes called the Valley of Death, where some university discoveries wither and die because no one advances them, according to Susalka, the expert in technology transfer.
Dahl did not respond to a request for an interview about his company, which sells kits for making modified RNAs on its website and has drawn little attention, despite the key part it played in getting the Penn mRNA technology into the hands of Moderna and BioNTech.Estimating Penn’s share of vaccine sales
If BioNTech has the same terms with Cellscript, then the Pfizer-BioNTech joint venture would have paid an additional $1.82 billion to Cellscript. Northwestern, for example, sold part of the royalty rights to Lyrica, an epilepsy and nerve-pain drug, for $700 million in 2007, but still collected more than $1 billion in royalties over the following six years.The COVID vaccines were the first commercial successes in the field of mRNA biology, which hasResearchers at BioNTech, Moderna, and other companies are working on mRNA vaccines against influenza, HIV, RSV , Zika, and other viruses. Cancer is another major focus for mRNA researchers.