Vedanta Biosciences, a clinical-stage company developing a potential new category of oral therapies based on defined bacterial consortia, today announced that the Opposition Division of the European Patent Office (EPO) has fully upheld Vedanta’s foundational patents EP3178483B1, EP3552613B1, and EP3539548B1 (the “Honda patents”) in oral opposition proceedings held in Munich over the course of three weeks. In all three cases, the originally granted claims of the patents were upheld without any modification and were deemed valid and supported by the EPO. Opponents included Nestlé SA as well as three anonymous parties.
The Honda patents are based on groundbreaking work at the lab of Dr. Kenya Honda, a scientific co-founder of Vedanta, which identified clostridial bacteria that induce significant immune responses. Clostridial bacterial species are abundant in the gut and are of high interest for use in live biotherapeutic products designed to colonize and modulate a patient’s microbiome to therapeutic effect. All of Vedanta’s therapeutic candidates contain clostridial species. The Honda patents are exclusively licensed to Vedanta under an agreement with the University of Tokyo, provide coverage through at least 2031, and are now issued in major commercial markets, including the United States, Europe, Japan, and China.
The upheld patent claims broadly cover compositions of clostridial bacterial species for use in infectious disease, allergy, and autoimmune diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease.
“These decisions by the EPO reinforce our long-standing belief in the validity and novelty of the Honda patents, in addition to supporting their relevance for the development and commercialization of microbiome drugs based on live bacteria at a time when the field is maturing,”
said Bernat Olle, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Vedanta Biosciences.
The Honda patents, together with additional Vedanta patents, provide the company with a leading IP position in the microbiome field. Vedanta’s portfolio contains 45 issued U.S. patents and 38 issued foreign patents in Europe, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Israel, Korea, Mexico, Russia, and Taiwan with coverage extending to 2039, and pending applications with coverage extending through 2043.