Recent Trends of Therapeutic Strategies against COVID-19

Abstract

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by a virus named SARS-CoV-2, has spread rapidly around the world. Objective: To better understand the recent development of therapeutic strategies against COVID-19 and the patent landscape, we analyze patent documents surrounding COVID-19. Methods: The patent documents surrounding COVID-19 from 6 major countries, including China, the US, Russia, Korea, India, and Singapore, were analyzed by a comprehensive analysis. The patent documents surrounding COVID-19 were published from November 2019 to April 2021. Results: The analysis showed that China was the most prolific country in patents surrounding COVID-19, with over 300 published patent documents. A significant feature of therapeutic strategies against COVID-19 was the contribution of traditional Chinese medicines in China. Our study showed the number of patents in the therapeutic area was about half in all patent applications, which indicated that therapeutic approaches, detecting, and protecting approaches were the same in importance against COVID-19. Conclusion: The main therapeutic strategies against COVID-19 include traditional Chinese medicines, chemical drugs, and vaccines. An effective and fast approach against COVID-19 is to use vaccines or traditional Chinese Medicines. The present study showed the development of a therapeutic strategy surrounding COVID-19 based on patent insight for the first time and provided new insight into therapeutic strategy against COVID-19.