Rick,
<<I'm not exactly clear about how they restrict the individual components of the multivalent molecule in the first place......>>
The Advanced Medicine patent apps are actually pretty clear on this point. The short answer is: they don't.
The principals are very closed-mouth about what they're doing: several friends of mine were recruited heavily (they didn't go), and all they were told was: "it's so secret and novel we can't tell you what we're doing". But the paper trail (WO applications) is there: they take known small molecule ligands and hook them together to get larger, presumably more potent, ligands.
This is not a new theory (medicinal chemists have been using this concept for decades), and they aren't the only company doing it. They're not even the only company trying to patent this "new idea". Ellman from UC Berkeley even published on this general concept in a recent PNAS paper, Fesik from Abbott has published on NMR-guided techniques for years, and other academics (Wong from Scripps, Hanessian from Montreal) have also published papers demonstrating the validity of this approach.
Nice idea, just not new, I don't see the IP, and the patents are going to be nearly impossible to enforce (if they ever issue). Personally, I think one "skilled in the art" would classify this as falling in the "obvious" category, but we'll see the USPTO says . . . .
The upside is that, if they have any talent or luck at all, they will find decent molecules. Whether they're drugs or not . . . . |
