Report questions Moderna patent after gene match found in SARS-CoV-2

An investigation has revived debate over the origins of COVID-19, highlighting a 2016 Moderna-patented gene sequence that researchers later identified within the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Author and independent researcher John Leake outlined concerns raised by scientists, former officials and commentators over whether the match — involving part of the virus’s furin cleavage site, a region critical to human infectivity — warrants deeper investigation by U.S. authorities. While the finding has circulated in political and scientific circles since 2022, the US government has not publicly pursued the matter.

The discussion centres on a peer-reviewed paper published in Frontiers in Virology, which reported that a 19-nucleotide sequence found in SARS-CoV-2 is a perfect reverse-complement match to one patented by Moderna years earlier. The authors calculated the likelihood of this match occurring by chance as extremely low, prompting speculation about how the patented sequence could have entered the virus. Some analysts argue that such a sequence is not found in nature and may have appeared only if SARS-like coronaviruses were cultured alongside this genetic material.

The investigation also revisits historical ties between Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Before joining Moderna, Bancel led French diagnostics giant bioMérieux, which collaborated with China in establishing a BSL-4 laboratory in Wuhan following the 2003 SARS outbreak. Staff training and early planning for the facility involved personnel connected to Bancel’s former company. Moderna, meanwhile, received early funding from DARPA and began collaborating with US infectious-disease agencies on coronavirus vaccines years before the COVID-19 ‘pandemic’.

Moderna patented its gene sequence in 2016 during this period of coronavirus-related research. Four years later, US authorities launched human trials for Moderna’s mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine just days after the WHO confirmed SARS-CoV-2 as the cause of a global outbreak. Moderna’s rapid rise and Bancel’s subsequent financial windfall of billions have added further fuel to public speculation, though no official inquiry has connected the company’s patented sequence to the emergence of the virus.

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