Moderna data used for the first time to develop a rival COVID-19 vaccine
libre de droit/iStock via Getty Images

In a worldâs first, South African biotech company, Afrigen Biologics has used publicly accessible sequence data of Moderna's (MRNA
-1.6%) messenger-RNA COVID-19 vaccine to develop its own version of the shot, the company's top executive said Thursday, according to Reuters.
The vaccine candidate has become not only the first home-grown mRNA shot produced at a lab-scale in Africa, but also the first to be designed without the developerâs approval or assistance.
Afrigenâs invention comes after the company joined a consortium formed by the World Health Organization (WHO) last year to give COVID-19 vaccine know-how to poor and middle-income countries in a pilot project.
Modernaâs vaccine was picked as the company had promised not to enforce vaccine patents during the pandemic.
"We haven't copied Moderna, we've developed our own processes because Moderna didn't give us any technology," remarked Petro Terblanche, managing director at Afrigen.
"We started with the Moderna sequence because that gives, in our view, the best starting material. But this is not Modernaâs vaccine, it is the Afrigen mRNA hub vaccine" Terblanche said, indicating that the vaccine candidate will undergo human testing as early as this year.
"We will only make our clinical trial batch probably in six months from now, (meaning) ... fit for humans. And the target is November 2022," Terblanche said, adding that the company is receiving technical assistance from U.S.-based life sciences company Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO).
Announcing its decision to waive the vaccine patents, Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) said in 2020 that the company was prepared to license the patents once the pandemic ended.
Last year, sparking a dispute with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Moderna (MRNA) asserted ownership to a core patent related to the COVID-19 vaccine.