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news.Isis Pharmaceuticals, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, and the companies' joint venture Regulus Therapeutics have announced that the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted notices of allowance for two US patent applications that further enhance the scope of Isis's 'Crooke' patent estate, which broadly covers RNA-containing therapeutics.
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The Crooke patent estate is a family of patents stemming from the research of Stanley Crooke and others at Isis to identify and design RNA molecules that harness cellular RNase enzymes as antisense drugs, including RNAi and microRNA therapeutics.
The Crooke patent estate is owned by Isis and licensed to Alnylam for the development of double-stranded RNAi therapeutics, and to Regulus Therapeutics for microRNA-based therapeutics.
The newly allowed claims cover methods of treating patients by administering an siRNA or a single-stranded RNA-containing compound; and pharmaceutical compositions containing single-stranded RNA-like compounds. These allowances are said to further strengthen Isis’s broadly applicable intellectual property (IP) estate covering RNA-based drug discovery, development and therapeutic uses.
John Maraganore, CEO of Alnylam, said: “The allowance of these new patents is particularly important because they broaden the scope of our IP covering pharmaceutical compositions and methods of treating patients with RNAi therapeutics.”