Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) has obtained copies of two vaccine-related contracts entered into by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), one with AstraZeneca related to COVID-19 vaccines and one with Moderna related to Zika vaccine research. The Moderna Zika contract is of note as it may have helped fund the Moderna mRNA platform technology underlying the Moderna vaccine for COVID-19.
AstraZeneca Contract
The BARDA-AstraZeneca contract received by KEI concerns AstraZeneca’s efforts to develop and manufacture a COVID-19 vaccine (AZD1222), commits $413.2 million in funding (with a ceiling of $1.2 billion), and states as an objective that AstraZeneca will manufacture 300,000,000 doses of the vaccine. The records received via FOIA include:
- HHS/ASPR/BARDA-AstraZeneca Advanced Agreement to Other Transaction Agreement 75A501-20-C-00114
- HHS/ASPR/BARDA-AstraZeneca Modification of Other Transaction Agreement 75A501-20-C-00114 MODP00001
Of particular note are the extensive redactions in the contract. Key sections of the agreement, including the terms related to ‘Intellectual Property Rights’ are completely redacted, and the modification of the OTA is almost wholly redacted.
Example of redaction in AstraZeneca agreement.
Moderna Contract
As mentioned above, the Moderna contract is an agreement concerning a potential Zika vaccine from 2016. This agreement was of interest to KEI as through our research into Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine efforts, it appears that the funding from this Zika research agreement helped support the development of the Moderna mRNA platform technology underlying its COVID-19 vaccine efforts.
A PDF of the Moderna 2016 Zika agreement is available here: https://www.keionline.org/misc-docs/FOIA/ASPR-BARDA-Moderna-HHS0100201600029c-1sep2016.pdf
For more on their vaccine research and KEI’s research into their efforts, please visit our page on Moderna.
For background on KEI’s work related to Zika, see: https://www.keionline.org/?s=zika