The point in showing the date for which the patent was applied is that it illustrates that this scenario is not what we were led to believe. We were told this was a new, unexpected, franken-virus that emanated from Mexico and quickly spread ’round the world, creating an unanticipated global crisis. How do you patent a vaccine for a virus that doesn’t yet exist?
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I have to get into the biology a bit…
The virus STRAIN is new, the serotype (H1N1) is NOT NEW. People confuse those two. The vaccine is for H1N1 SEROTYPE. Many strains of H1N1 serotype flu viruses exist already and have circulated in the past in other animal species (e.g. farm animals, birds). Most people have not heard of it – why should they? it wasn’t causing epidemics in humans. It was sometimes found in humans.
The Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 that killed so many was H1N1 serotype. In Russia, there were epidemics of H1N1 serotype in 50s and 70s.
This was a NEW STRAIN, but the same serotype. If it contains the H1 (hemagglutinin) and N1 (neuraminidase) genes, in theory it does not matter if it has other new, recombined, genes from other species etc., it is still serotype H1N1 and a vaccine for H1N1 serotype should work,at least to a significant extent even if it is a new strain. Probably, if you know more about the circulating strains, you may want to tweak the vaccine a little more, to make it more effective.
FYI, there are 16 types of hemagglutinin (H1 – H16) genes and 9 types of neuraminidase genes (N1 – N9) in influenza, and any combination (or serotype) is possible in theory.
Ideally the pharma companies should create/patent vaccines for all of the more common serotypes.But of course it doesn’t pay off to do so, since likely most of the common serotypes would not cause epidemics in humans…
For many years, serotype H3N2 was the most prevalent one creating epidemics in humans. This is now called “seasonal” flu to distinguish nowadays from H1N1.
