FIZ Search Service Study on COVID-19 Drug Candidate showcases the Power of STN®´s Sophisticated Retrieval Tools and Value-Added Content

As soon as a potential drug candidate against COVID-19 has been approved, the drug must be rapidly manufactured and distributed worldwide. It is essential to take existing industrial property rights into account and, if necessary, to conclude appropriate license agreements. The legal situation, e.g., regarding the patent owners or the duration of the remaining patent protection in different countries, must be determined reliably and in good time.

Using the example of Favipiravir (drug name Avigan®), which was developed against bird flu and Ebola, the case study created by the FIZ Search Service demonstrates how these questions are answered by means of an extensive search in STN’s unsurpassed collection of value-added chemical substance and patent databases.

The key patents cannot be retrieved by a simple chemical name search in first level databases (i.e. patent full-text databases) but only by a thorough structure search in curated substance databases. STN does not only provide the unique collection of valuable content but also the precise tools to retrieve highly relevant results in an efficient way. Among the databases that were used are the authoritative CAS Registry® database and the Derwent Markush Chemistry Resource. The legal status of the key patents was further analyzed using the INPADOC database on STN and registers of the patent offices.

In a nutshell, the study found that although the original Favipiravir patent lost its patent protection in many countries, FUJIFILM Toyama Chemicals can still commercially exploit their original invention worldwide with a series of valid chemical process and formulation patents.

Read the complete case study “Favipiravir, a drug candidate against COVID-19 – a FIZ Karlsruhe case study exploring the patent situation“

To learn more about how the structure search was conducted on STN we recommend this recorded e-Seminar on multi-file structure searching on STNext® which uses the Avigan® structure as example.

The Study is part of a series of articles available at “FIZ Special Corona” .