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COVID vaccines pushed Penn’s licensing revenue over $1 billion last year, after the school ranked No. 1 in 2021

Penn will likely be at the top again, when the bulk of its licensing revenues from COVID-19 vaccines are included in the rankings.

A pharmacist holds up a vial of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
A pharmacist holds up a vial of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.Read moreRingo Chiu / MCT

The University of Pennsylvania recently touted its number-one ranking among U.S. research institutions for licensing revenue — more than twice the next highest reported.

Penn’s licensing revenue totaled $310 million in the year that ended June 30, 2021, a “huge number,” Stephen J. Susalka, CEO of AUTM, a trade group that collects licensing data, told The Inquirer last year. The entire University of California system came in second, with $135 million in revenue.

But wait until next year.

That’s when Penn’s haul of more than $1 billion in licensing revenue for fiscal 2022 — most from its development of technology used in COVID-19 vaccines — will be included in the annual ranking by AUTM, which represents university technology transfer managers who help scientists commercialize their inventions.

The Inquirer last year used publicly-available information to estimate that Penn’s licensing revenue from COVID-19 vaccines alone was approaching $1 billion from the beginning of 2021 through March 2022. The Inquirer’s analysis included parts of two fiscal years.

» READ MORE: Research behind COVID-19 vaccines reaps close to $1 billion in royalties for Penn

Penn officials have said confidentiality agreements prevent them from sharing precisely how much revenue the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have brought in.

Through March 2022, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which use technology that originated at Penn, had collected $73.5 billion in revenue from COVID-19 vaccine sales. The pharmaceutical companies had an additional $37 billion revenue from their COVID vaccines through December, but this year, vaccine revenues are expected to tail off.

Moderna predicted $5 billion in revenue from COVID-19 vaccines this year. Pfizer estimated $13.5 billion in sales of the COVID vaccine it brought to market.

Penn’s licensing revenue will fall in tandem, though it could be buoyed if new medications come to market using the technology first documented at Penn in 2005 by biochemist Katalin Karikó and immunologist Drew Weissman. The discovery allowed the development of a vaccine that delivered genetic instructions to the human body on how to fight off the COVID-19 virus.