Patent Profile: Raptor Pharmaceuticals Secures Allowances for Brain Drug Delivery Methods

By Mark Chael —

On April 29, 2009, Raptor Pharmaceuticals Corp. announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently issued Notices of Allowance for two of its pending patent applications related to methods of delivering drugs to the brain. The Notices were issued for U.S. Patent Application Nos. 10/812,849 and 11/202,566. The published applications are entitled "Megalin-based Delivery of Therapeutic Compounds to the Brain and Other Tissues" and "Use of the Chaperone Receptor-associated Protein (RAP) for the Delivery of Therapeutic Compounds to the Brain and Other Tissues," respectively. These applications are directed to the company's NeuroTrans™ drug delivery platform.

An exemplary allowed claim from the '849 patent application reads as follows:

1. A method of delivering an active agent into the central nervous system of an animal comprising administering to said animal a conjugate comprising said agent conjugated to a Receptor Associated Protein (RAP) polypeptide consisting of an amino acid sequence at least 80% identical to amino acids 221-323 of RAP (SEQ ID NO:1), wherein said RAP polypeptide retains megalin-binding activity and wherein said agent is delivered into the central nervous system.

Similarly, one of the allowed claims from the '566 patent application reads as follows:

1. A method of delivering a therapeutic or diagnostic/investigational agent across the blood brain barrier (BBB) into the central nervous system in a subject in need thereof, said method comprising: administering to said subject a chimeric RAP fusion protein comprising said therapeutic or diagnostic/investigational agent, wherein the RAP portion of the chimeric RAP fusion protein consists of an amino acid sequence at least 80% identical to amino acids 221-323 of SEQ ID NO:1.

According to Raptor's website, the company was founded in 2005 by former executives and scientists from BioMarin Pharmaceutical, Inc. In January 2006, Raptor acquired the intellectual property for the NeuroTrans™ program from BioMarin. Since its incorporation in 2005, Raptor has completed five product and technology acquisitions, including Convivia™, which addresses the toxicity associated with ALDH2 deficiency, and DR Cysteamine, which may be useful for a variety of clinical applications.

The assignment databases at the USPTO list Raptor Pharmaceutical, Inc. as the assignee of four patent applications, and BioMarin Pharmaceutical as the assignor or assignee of a number of patents and applications.

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