China grants patent to local vaccine
China will always be nagged by accusations that it was the first country to experience an outbreak of COVID19, and the country where it was first detected.
Keen to get rid of the albatross around its neck amid further US accusations of Chinese hackers trying to steal novel coronavirus data from them, Beijing has been under great pressure to deliver a vaccine to fight the disease which has now killed more than 750,000 people around the world.
The efforts have started yielding results, it is claimed, and Chinese authorities have granted the first invention patent to a domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine candidate, reports State-controlled Global Times.
The vaccine is a recombinant adenovirus vaccine named Ad5-nCoV developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical firm CanSino Biologics Inc in collaboration with a team led by Chinese military infectious disease expert Chen Wei.
The grant of the patent demonstrates China’s belief in the vaccine's originality and creativity and is expected to enhance the international market's trust in vaccines developed by Beijing. CanSino is also probably applying for a patent with foreign authorities to protect its IPR during international cooperation.
Lawyers say China has a comparatively strict and complete patent examination system, requiring a technology or product to be fundamentally different from existing similar technologies and products all over the world to be granted the patent.
Results of the phase one and two trials were revealed as of July 20, showing a good safety profile and high levels of humoral and cellular immune responses. CanSino has signed deals with Mexico to conduct late-stage clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines, the Ministr y of Foreign Affairs of Mexico said last week.
Saudi Arabian health officials also announced on August 9 that they are cooperating with phase III clinical trials on the vaccine, recruiting around 5,000 participants. CanSino has also reportedly been in talks with Russia, Brazil and Chile to launch a Phase III trial.
China and Russia plan to collaborate on COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials, said Chinese top respirator y scientist Zhong Nanshan, a leading figure in the fight against COVID-19, at a recent academic exchange conference.
Signs of cooperation seem to have emerged as early as Januar y, media reported, as the Russian consulate in China's Guangzhou revealed in a statement on its website that "Russian and Chinese experts have begun developing a vaccine" and Beijing has handed over the genome of the virus to Moscow.
Experts said the move is part of China's promise to pitch into the global fight against the virus, adding that China and Russia have a clear basis for vaccine cooperation in resource sharing and mass production. China and Russia can exchange R&D data and techniques, given that the second dose of Russia's newly approved world's first COVID-19 vaccine has almost the same mechanism as that of the China-developed adenovirus vector vaccine, Ad5-nCoV.
China may also be able to help Russia with mass production for its second dose of the vaccine, if needed, considering China has relatively ample capacity for mass production.
Potential cooperation between China and Russia would be a winwin situation for both, feel experts.