The China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) granted on September 11, 2020 what may be the first patent covering a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus.  The patent published under number CN111218459B. The Institute of Military Medicine, Chinese Academy of Military Sciences in conjunction with CanSinoBIO, a Chinese vaccine maker, filed application CN202010193587.8 on March 18, 2020 and is entitled “A new recombinant coronavirus vaccine using human replication-deficient adenovirus as a vector.”  The patent is based on research earlier published in the Lancet showing their Ad5 vectored COVID-19 vaccine “is tolerable and immunogenic at 28 days post-vaccination.” Per the Wall Street Journal, China’s military has already approved the use of CanSino’s vaccine before the completion of large-scale final testing, usually known as Phase 3 trials.

FIG. 1 of CN111218459B

The claims read roughly as follows:

1. The polynucleotide for coding the S protein of the 2019 novel coronavirus is characterized in that the sequence of the polynucleotide is shown as SEQ ID NO: 1.

2. A vector comprising the polynucleotide of claim 1.

3. The vector of claim 2, wherein the vector is pdc 316.

4. A human replication-deficient recombinant adenovirus expressing the polynucleotide of claim 1.

5. The recombinant adenovirus of claim 4, wherein the recombinant adenovirus is derived from an admax adenovirus system.

6. The application of the recombinant adenovirus of claim 4 or 5 in preparing a vaccine for preventing 2019 novel coronavirus.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the recombinant adenovirus is formulated as an injection, nasal drop, or spray.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the recombinant adenovirus is prepared as an intramuscular injection.

9. A method of preparing a recombinant adenovirus according to claim 4 or 5, said method comprising the steps of: (1) constructing a shuttle plasmid vector comprising a polynucleotide encoding a 2019 novel coronavirus s protein; (2) transfecting the shuttle plasmid vector and the skeleton plasmid of step (1) into the host cell; (3) culturing the host cell in step (2); (4) harvesting the human replication-deficient recombinant adenovirus released from the cells of step (3); (5) amplifying and culturing the recombinant adenovirus in step (4); (6) purifying the culture product in step (5).

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the vector of step (1) is pdc 316.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the backbone plasmid of step (2) is pBHGlox_E1, 3Cre.

12. The method of claim 9, wherein the cell of step (3) is an hek293 cell.

13. The method of claim 9, wherein the amplification culture method of step (5) is suspension culture.

14. The method of claim 9, wherein the purification method of step (6) is source 30q chromatography.

The sequence listing follows:

On August 11, inventor Chen Wei was awarded the national honorary title of “Hero of the People” for her outstanding contribution to the fight against the coronavirus pneumonia epidemic.