Alnylam, Regulus Receives Notice Of Allowance From USPTO

Alnylam and Regulus Therapeutics (Regulus) have reported that the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a notice of allowance for the Manoharan patent (application number 11/200703), which covers several chemical classes of anti-miRs, antisense oligonucleotide inhibitors of microRNAs.

The company said that the new patent in combination with Regulus’ existing intellectual property estate broadly covers approaches to developing microRNA-based therapeutics.

Muthiah Manoharan, vice president for drug discovery at Alnylam, said: “We are pleased to have this important recognition from the USPTO regarding our discovery of antagomirs, a new class of anti-miRs and a novel invention in the field of microRNA-based therapeutics.

With this initial grant, we have received broad claims covering classes of anti-miRs with certain important chemical features for optimal delivery and in vivo pharmacology. Importantly, the inventive nature of these novel compositions was allowed independent of any specific microRNA sequence, thereby providing a broad set of patent claims that add to the innovations Regulus can employ in designing novel microRNA therapeutics, an entire new class of medicines.”