CanSino COVID-19 vax gets the greenlight for Chinese military use

June 29, 2020

China’s military has gotten the ok to use a COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by its research unit and CanSino Biologics, after clinical trials proved it was safe and showed some efficacy.

China’s Central Military Commission approved the use of the vaccine — developed jointly by CanSino and a research institute at the Academy of Military Science — by the military on June 25 for a period of one year, the drugmaker said in a filing. 

The vaccine candidate is built upon CanSino's adenovirus-based viral vector vaccine technology platform, which has also been successfully applied to develop the globally innovative vaccine against Ebola virus infection. 

The Ad5-nCoV is one of China’s eight vaccine candidates approved for human trials at home and abroad for COVID-19. The vaccine was also granted approval for human testing in Canada.

Read the Reuters coverage