Eligo Bioscience today announced that the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued on Nov 19, 2021, a decision and a judgement acknowledging priority to the invention of precision bacterial killing using CRISPR to The Rockefeller University. This invention described in patent family WO2014124226, is owned by The Rockefeller University and exclusively licensed to Eligo Bioscience. With the ruling, the USPTO canceled all claims of all five SNIPR Biome’s US patents involved in the interference.
In 2012, Professor Luciano Marraffini, currently head of the laboratory of bacteriology at The Rockefeller University, and Dr. David Bikard, then a postdoctoral scholar at The Rockefeller University, demonstrated that CRISPR could be used to kill bacteria with unprecedented precision, based on genetic determinants. The Rockefeller University filed a patent application directed to this invention.
In 2020, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was asked to declare an interference between the claims of #15/159,929 patent application (one member of patent family WO2014124226) covering a method for killing targeted bacteria in a mixed bacterial population and the claims of five SNIPR Biome patents. With the ruling issued on November 19, 2021, the USPTO canceled all claims of the five SNIPR Biome US patents involved in the interference, i.e., #10,582,712 – #10,506,812 – #10,463,049 – #10,524,477 – #US10,561,148.
“We were confident the USPTO would recognize the pioneering work of Professor Luciano Marraffini and Doctor David Bikard. Eligo Bioscience has been created to explore the full potential of the technology invented at The Rockefeller University and to enable the surgical removal of deleterious genes from the microbiome. Eligo Bioscience now owns a robust portfolio of 25+ patent families covering its diversified proprietary platforms and pipeline. This impactful decision issued by the USPTO confirms Eligo’s strong position as a leader in the microbiome gene editing field and will definitely bolster the development of our CRISPR programs, including our lead program which is entering clinical trials in 2022.”
Source: Eligo Biosciences