IUBio

Patents for phage display???

Troels Wind wind at biobase.dk
Tue May 30 03:54:06 EST 1995


Hi,

Like Andrew I attended the Italy-meeting and heard Ladners talk and some
of the discussions among other participants. My impression was that Ladners
patent for sure will be challenged, but I do have one question; What's the
situation in Europe? Is the patent valid here? Furthermore, some people
claimed that display of antibodies is excluded from the patent, can anyone
who has read the patent give a comment on that?

BTW, it was a fine meeting Andrew  :)

Regards,

Troels Wind
University of Aarhus
Denmark

Andrew, Tel. +396-91093434 (WALLACE at IRBM.IT) wrote:
: On Wed, 24 May 1995 15:03:13 -0500 in 
: Message-ID: <9552423054.~INN-DEAa00208.bionet-news at dl.ac.uk>
: pemanuel at umabnet.ab.edu (Peter) wrote:

: >Recently someone told me that a company called protein engineering Corp
: >has patented everything to do with phage display technology.  Has anyone
: >heard of this too?
: > I find it hard to believe that one comapny can lay claim to such a broad
: >area of science.  Post replies please.
: >   Peter
: >
: >-- 
: >Peter Emanuel Ph.D.
: >University of Maryland School of Medicine
: >4-027 Bressler Research Building
: >655 West Baltimore Street
: >Baltimore, MD 21201

: Dear Peter,

:    I have just come back from a meeting in Italy where Robert C. Ladner, the
: senior vice president of Protein Engineering Corp. was giving a talk. The
: patent issue came up and provoked some heated discussion. At one point Ladner
: asked the meeting organizer if he could make a formal address to the delegates
: on PEC's position. Summarising what he said, basically it seems that in 1988
: PEC applied for a patent on the use of phage display libraries to select
: peptides and proteins with novel activities. Their application was upheld by
: the US patent examiners despite a 1985 publication from George Smith which
: shows that proteins could be displayed on the surface of phage (Smith, G.P.
: "Filamentous Fusion Phage: Novel Expression Vectors That Display Cloned
: Antigens on the Virion Surface" Science 228: 1315-1317, 1985), because the US
: patent office held that it was not "obvious" (in the legal sense of the word)
: that such methods could be used to create, and select from, libraries which
: they agreed as being sufficiently novel to warrant patent protection. Ladner
: then stated that in his opinion, anyone using phage technology should approach
: PEC to discuss licensing, etc. arrangements. He promised that this would not
: be "onerous" for academic users but gave the impression that PEC would expect
: something from everyone.

:    I haven't seen the patent myself so I don't know what PEC are claiming, but
: from what I can gather from others who have seen it that it covers most of the
: methods currently used for generating and screening phage libraries, but not
: the general concept of using phages to display proteins, which is in the
: public domain after Smith's Science  paper.

:    Anyone have any more details about this?

:    Andrew


: P.S. Peter, sorry if you haven't been receiving messages from the molreps
: group, but our mails bounce from your site. Maybe you can ask your system
: administration if they can do something.

: ===============================================================================
:         Andrew Wallace, IRBM P. Angeletti, Pomezia, Italy.

:                	Voice: +39-6-91093434
:                	Fax:   +39-6-91093225
:                	Email: wallace at irbm.it

:  Discussion on phage display, combinatorial libraries, etc. - molreps at irbm.it
: 	     DISCLAIMER: I speak only for myself.
: ===============================================================================



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