Category: Patent Profiles

By Donald Zuhn — Last week, we discussed a patent, recently issued to 23andMe, Inc., that has created some controversy.  The patent, U.S. Patent No. 8,543,339, is directed to a system for identifying a preferred gamete donor from among the plurality of donors based on a phenotype of interest, the genotype of a recipient, and…

By Donald Zuhn — A patent issued to 23andMe, Inc. last month has created some controversy, and in response, the biotech company, based in Mountain View, California, has posted its side of the story on the 23andMe blog.  The patent, U.S. Patent No. 8,543,339, which is entitled "Gamete donor selection based on genetic calculations," is…

By Josh Bosman — In March, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. Patent No. 8,401,801, entitled "Methods for Selecting Medications."  The '801 patent, which is assigned to the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, contains claims that share some similarities with the claims in U.S. Patent No. 6,680,302, which was licensed to…

By Josh Bosman — Earlier this month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. Patent No. 8,409,819, entitled "Methods to predict risk for celiac disease by detecting anti-flagellin antibody levels."  The '819 patent is assigned to Nestec S.A. of Vevey, Switzerland, a research and testing subsidiary of Nestlé.  (Interestingly, the application from which the…

By Donald Zuhn — Last month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. Patent No. 8,293,266, entitled "Paromomycin-supplemented feed stuff for turkey and use thereof for prophylaxis of histomoniasis, reduction of the horizontal spreading of histomoniasis, and for improved weight gain and feed conversion," to Huvepharma AD, a pharmaceutical company based in Sofia, Bulgaria. …

By Kwame Mensah — Recently, MultiCell Technologies, Inc. of Woonsocket, RI, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focusing on unmet medical needs for the treatment of neurological disorders, hepatic disease, and cancer, announced that it had been issued U.S. Patent No. 7,935,528, which is related to the isolation and use of human liver stem cells to treat…

By Kwame Mensah — Earlier this month, Antisense Pharma, GmbH, a biopharmaceutical company located in Regensburg, Germany, announced the issuance of U.S. Patent No. 7,963,956, entitled "Portable equipment for administration of fluids into tissues and tumors by convection enhanced delivery technique," which is directed to Convection Enhanced Delivery (CED).  CED is being touted as an…

    By Nate Chongsiriwatana — BioNanomatrix, Inc. recently announced the issuance of U.S. Patent No. 7,670,770 for nanochannel arrays that enable high-throughput macromolecular analysis. Previously, single-molecule DNA analysis has been limited by the difficulty of linearizing (untangling) and manipulating intact native DNA.  To address these limitations, a Princeton University research team, including Dr. Han Cao,…

    By Nate Chongsiriwatana — Hana Biosciences, Inc. recently announced that it received a Notice of Allowance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for U.S. Application No. 11/886,803, entitled "Vitamin K for Prevention and Treatment of Skin Rash Secondary to Anti-EGFR Therapy" (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0209652 A1).  Skin rash is a painful…

    By James DeGiulio — On April 13, 2010, Sloning Biotechnology announced the issuance of U.S. Patent No. 7,695,906, which covers an optimized method of Slonomics, the company's platform technology.  Slonomics uses a set of double stranded DNA triplets as universal building blocks for the synthesis of combinatorial libraries.  This triplet library contains all possible…