By Donald Zuhn —

Last Friday, Vaccinex, Inc. announced that it had been granted European Patent No. 1 340 088.  According to the statement released by Vaccinex, the ‘088 patent covers the Rochester, New York-based company’s ActivMAb® antibody discovery technology platform, which can be used for the discovery and development of new monoclonal antibody therapies, and which Vaccinex has used to identify four of its lead therapeutic antibodies.

Vaccinex President and CEO Dr. Maurice Zauderer stated that "[t]his European patent, and related patents already awarded in the United States and elsewhere, underscores the novelty of our discovery technology, which gives Vaccinex important advantages over competitors in the area of therapeutic antibodies."  Vaccinex estimates that the market for antibody therapies in 2007 will be $25 billion, and projects the market to reach $43 billion by 2012.

Vaccinex describes its ActivMAb® technology as allowing for the direct selection of high-affinity, fully human antibodies using a unique vaccinia virus-based vector to express antibodies in mammalian cells, thereby providing extremely high levels of combinatorial diversity of immunoglobulin heavy and light chains.  A video outlining Vaccinex’ antibody technology can be viewed here.  Representative independent claim 1 of the ‘088 patent recites:

1.  An in vitro method of selecting polynucleotides which encode an antigen-specific immunoglobulin molecule, or antigen-specific fragment thereof, comprising:

(a)  introducing into a population of eukaryotic host cells capable of expressing said immunoglobulin molecule a first library of polynucleotides encoding, through operable association with a transcriptional control region, a plurality of first immunoglobulin subunit polypeptides, each first immunoglobulin subunit polypeptide comprising:

(i)  a first immunoglobulin constant region selected from the group consisting of a heavy chain constant region and a light chain constant region,
(ii)  an immunoglobulin variable region corresponding to said first constant region, and
(iii)  a signal peptide capable of directing cell surface expression or secretion of said first immunoglobulin subunit polypeptide;

(b)  introducing into said host cells a second library of polynucleotides encoding, through operable association with a transcriptional control region, a plurality of second immunoglobulin subunit polypeptides, each comprising:

(i)  a second immunoglobulin constant region selected from the group consisting of a heavy chain constant region and a light chain constant region, wherein said second immunoglobulin constant region is not the same as said first immunoglobulin constant region,
(ii)  an immunoglobulin variable region corresponding to said second constant region, and
(iii)  a signal peptide capable of directing cell surface expression or secretion of said second immunoglobulin subunit polypeptide, wherein said second immunoglobulin subunit polypeptide is capable of combining with said first immunoglobulin subunit polypeptide to form an immunoglobulin molecule, or antigen-specific fragment thereof;

(c)  permitting expression of immunoglobulin molecules, or antigen-specific fragments thereof, from said host cells;
(d)  contacting said immunoglobulin molecules with an antigen; and
(e)  recovering those polynucleotides of said first library which express immunoglobulin molecules, or antigen-specific fragments thereof, specific for said antigen.