That does not surprise me. When I left MPI Research in 2017 it was one of the top three contract research laboratories in the world (the others being Charles River and Covance) and as such would have been involved in mRNA work if this was being done by any of our clients. As a data technician/data coordinator I was in a position to know who they were and what they were working on, and I do not recall anything regarding mRNA vaccines of any type. This doesn't mean that they weren't being worked on there but if they were it was not widely discussed, which seems strange for something that is supposedly cutting edge technology. The big buzz at the time was a new piece of equipment called a cyclotron which apparently our competitors did not have. I also never heard anything about any DARPA projects being conducted there, which based on what I have heard about them does not surprise me; my impression is that DARPA is pretty closed-mouth and likes to keep things in-house instead of contracting them out.