ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,281,138, issued on April 22, was assigned to BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals GmbH (Mainz, Germany).

"5'-cap-trinucleotide- or higher oligonucleotide compounds and their use in stabilizing RNA, expressing proteins in therapy" was invented by Andreas Kuhn (Mainz, Germany), Hiromi Muramatsu (Mainz, Germany), Katalin Kariko (Mainz, Germany), Stephanie Fesser (Mainz, Germany) and Ugur Sahin (Mainz, Germany).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present invention relates to 5'-cap compounds, in particular the stabilization of RNA by such 5'-cap compounds, and provides compositions, such as pharmaceutical compositions, and cells comprising an RNA which...