China grants country’s first COVID-19 vaccine patent

BEIJING: China’s vaccine specialist CanSino Biologics has won a patent approval from Beijing for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate Ad5-nCOV, state media reported, citing documents from the country’s intellectual property regulator.

It is the first COVID-19 vaccine patent granted by China, state-owned newspaper People’s Daily reported on Sunday.

The paper cited documents published by China’s National Intellectual Property Administration saying that the patent was issued on Aug. 11.

Saudi Arabia said this month it plans to begin Phase III clinical trials for the CanSino vaccine. CanSino has said it is also in talks with Russia, Brazil and Chile to launch Phase III trials in those countries.

CanSino’s Hong Kong shares rose around 14% in Monday’s morning session. Its Shanghai shares rose by 6.6% as of midday.

China’s Central Military Commission approved the use of the vaccine by the military on June 25 for a period of one year, CanSino had said in a filing. The vaccine candidate was developed jointly by CanSino and a research institute at the Academy of Military Science (AMS).

The vaccine candidate is built upon CanSinoBIO’s adenovirus-based viral vector vaccine technology platform, which has also been successfully applied to develop the globally innovative vaccine against Ebola virus infection.

Incorporated in 2009, CanSinoBIO commits to research, production and commercialization of innovative vaccines for China and global public health security.

It possesses four integrated platform technologies including adenovirus-based vectors, conjugation, protein design and recombination and formulation.