[Intelligence Network] As drug manufacturers speed up their efforts to find a new treatment drug for the coronavirus outbreak that has devastated China and has caused a world-wide panic, a Chinese drug company just announced that it has started mass-producing an experimental drug from Gilead Sciences that has the potential to fight the novel coronavirus (1).BrightGene Bio-Medical Technology, a Suzhou based company (2), just announced that it has developed the technology to synthesize the active pharmaceutical ingredients of Remdesivir, the drug developed by Gilead Biosciences. Its stock price surged 20% in Tuesday morning trading in Shanghai (1).
"While BrightGene said that it intends to license the drug from Gilead, its move to start manufacturing at this early stage is highly unusual and a potential infringement of the American company’s intellectual property."(1) This comes a week after Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology filed an application to patent Gilead’s drug Remdesivir to treat the new coronavirus, a bid that would give China leverage over the global use of the therapy to fight the outbreak (1)(3)(4).
The decision to seek a patent instead of invoking a "compulsory license" option that lets nations override drug patents in national emergencies, signals China’s commitment toward intellectual property rights. The timing is uncanny! Right? Gilead will retain the global rights to market the antiviral medication, once approved (3). Gilead has also announced that it is partnering with the Chinese Health Authorities on the clinical trials of Remdesivir as a treatment for coronavirus (5). Remdesivir was originally developed in 2016 by Gilead as a treatment for the Ebola virus (13). Many have argued that China stole the patent from Gilead due to a technicality, but you will soon see that this is indeed not the case (14).