The surprise is why this was never tested before by Pfizer or Moderna themselves. For all drugs you typically evaluate how they are metabolized in the body, and this has never been published before. Very sloppy standards.

You are likely looking for the research done on flu vaccinations.

From 2017 https://www.flagshippioneering.com/press/moderna-announces-p...

And also from 2017 Safety, Reactogenicity, and Immunogenicity of mRNA-1653 in Healthy Adults https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03392389

The research and testing for mRNA had been a decade in the making and was already present in 2019.

You need to do that for every new drug marketed, you can't just refer to prior art.