Chen Wei, an academician at the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Academy of Military Medical Sciences, has made critical progress in developing a novel coronavirus vaccine with the support of her research team.

The military medical expert team has been working in Wuhan in central China for more than a month to develop a recombinant subunit vaccine. It passed the registration review phase of clinical research and was approved for clinical trial on March 16.

The vaccine has been approved for safety efficacy and quality by a third party. Chen said it was also ready for mass production.

According to the World Health Organization, a recombinant subunit vaccine uses only a fragment of the pathogen to stimulate a protective immune response and is based on a relatively more mature technology.

Chen, a 54-year-old PLA major general, was involved in combating severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003. She also led a team in developing the world's first gene-based vaccine for Ebola in Africa in 2014. She was selected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2019.