Patents on Coronavirus

By P. Kandiah

Did you know that as early as 23 July 2014, a patent application for coronavirus was filed?

This patent was filed in the UK and subsequently, a corresponding patent was granted in the US on 20 November 2018 under patent grant no. US 10,130701 B2. The Patentee of the US Patent is The Pirbright Institute, a British research institute located in Woking, England.

The invention provides a live, attenuated coronavirus comprising a variant replicase gene encoding polyproteins comprising a mutation in one or more structural proteins.

The coronavirus may be used as a vaccine for treating and/or preventing a disease such as infectious bronchitis. It is pertinent to point out that the coronavirus of this patent is not the current COVID-19 which is causing the global pandemic now. It is interesting to note that the inventors were already conducting research to produce a novel coronavirus before the year 2014. The inventors named in the patent are all British residents.

The invented (or man-made) coronavirus can be used as a vaccine for treating and/or preventing infectious bronchitis. The Pirbright Institute, realizing the economic importance of their invention, had filed an international patent application under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) under application number PCT/GB2015/052124.

Due to the economic potential of a vaccine for infectious bronchitis, several other researchers and research institutions are also simultaneously doing extensive research to develop a successful vaccine for the virus which cures bronchitis, as seen in the several journal articles and patent applications cited by the USPTO in Pirbright’s US Patent.

Let us hope at least one of the research institutions will soon be able to develop successful vaccine to prevent or treat the current novel COVID-19 virus infections.

Readers interested to see details of Pirbright’s US Patent can access it at this link: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10130701B2/en

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