"Artemisinin is a gift to the world  from traditional Chinese medicine," Facing various media interviews, the Chinese female pharmacist Tu Youyou, the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winner, repeated her acceptance speech.

This gift is so precious, because it saved the lives of millions of malaria patients all over the world, especially for the vast number of whom in developing countries. It is a brilliant example on using the scientific method to promote the heritage and innovation of traditional Chinese medicine and share it with the world. However, this gift is so "cheap", because of historical reasons, China hasn't established a patent system at that time, this great original invention with medical value and market prospects could not be protected.

In 1969, Tu Youyou, the assistant researcher of Traditional Chinese Medicine Research Institute under the Ministry of Health (now as the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine) attended "523 Project", officially becoming a member of China's research team on antimalarial drugs. During years followed, Tu Youyou and her team have experienced 190 failures. After going through a hard time, the team extracted an effective anti-malarial ingredient of Artemisia by using the ether, and then they successfully created the artemisinin, called as "Magic Chinese medicine" with a 100% antimalarial effect.

At that time China has not yet established the intellectual property system, Tu Youyou and her team could not rely on legal weapons to protect their innovations, but could be faced with the situation that their achievement would be stolen or even seized by a myriad of opponents at any time. In the early 1970s, China gradually published a series of research papers related to the artemisinin in a collective name and showed the artemisinin to the world. In October 1981, the international conference "Artemisinin Report Conference" was held in Beijing, the basic technology and research on artemisinin was competely opened to the world.

On April 1, 1985, China's patent law was enforced. On this day, Tu Youyou and her team submitted an invention patent application entitled "the production process of restoring artemisinin" to the China Patent Office (the predecessor of SIPO). The patent protection for the production process of artemisinin was finally available in the country. On January 1, 1993, China's patent law formally implemented after the first modification, and on the base of patent protection available for the original drug production process "the drugs and substances obtained by chemical methods" was also be involved in the scope of patent protection . Until then, over 20 years had passed after Tu Youyou extracted the artemisinin. Thereafter, Tu Youyou and her team continued to file patent applications and obtained other patent rights. Based on these patents, they cooperated with a Beijing-based company to develop the new mecdine, namely, dihydroartemisinin piperaquine.

According to one report on "Nature", there are more than 500 million people infected with malaria worldwide each year, most patients in Africa, which is the largest market for artemisinin. Generally speaking, in order to develop an industry, patent layout is essential in the predicted geographical markets. CIP News reporter commissioned the examiners of Pharmaceutical Biological Examination Department under SIPO to search worldwide patent literature and found that, as of October 10, 2015, in the field of artemisinin, the world's inventors submitted a total of 1,099 patent applications involving three categories on its derivatives pharmaceutical formulations, chemical synthesis and extraction process, mainly on the formulations. Among these 1,099 patent applications in the field of artemisinin, Chinese inventors have submitted approximately 500 patent applications, in which 78 patent applications were filed abroad, and majority are patent applications. Such data are encouraging, pharmaceutical companies researched for further development on the basis of Tu Youyou's achievement, and Chinese anti-malarial drugs industry is likely to earn remarkable money in the target market.

However, until today, artemisinin and its derivatives sales reached hundreds of millions of dollars each year, but the market that Chinese companies shared is less than 10%, or even 3% to 5% estimated by the industry experts. People can't help asking, with a more comprehensive patent protection system and the outstanding patent portfolio, why does China's artemisinin industry fail to dominate the global market? CIP News reporters are looking into the first and perhaps the most important piece of international patent applications - Coartem , through the "Patent Cooperation Treaty" (PCT) path to enter the multi-country – to find out the pace of development in the international market. (To be continued)

(China IP News)