(Diversys) Just parking...
Cambridge, UK, 25th September, 2001... Diversys Limited, the Cambridge-based protein engineering company, today announced that the US Patent and Trademark Office has issued four patents, to which Diversys has broad commercial rights. The Huse/Lerner/Winter patents (US 6291158, US 6291159, US 6291160 and US 6291161) cover the creation and selection of single domain and antibody expression libraries. Last year, Diversys was granted exclusive rights to these patents by the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) for the generation of single domains products for all applications, including therapeutics. MRC also granted Diversys the right to use the same patents to generate antibodies for a wide range of applications including proteomics and diagnostics.
The Huse/Lerner/Winter patents combine the inventions of the research teams of William Huse and Richard Lerner in the US and Greg Winter at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC-LMB) in the UK. The granted patents are co-owned by the MRC, Stratagene and The Scripps Research Institute. The technologies covered by these patents enable the generation of vast libraries of antibodies and single domains, which is the first critical step in developing commercial products based on these molecules. Single domains are the smallest binding fragments of antibodies and at one-tenth the size of full antibodies should offer significant advantages in terms of manufacturing, formulation, and therapeutic administration.
"The biopharmaceutical market is becoming crowded with companies developing full antibodies. These products face substantial cost, manufacturing and administration issues. We believe that single domains will address all these limitations", said Ian Tomlinson, Diversys' Chief Scientific Officer.
Commenting on the granting of the patents, Greg Winter, Founder and Director of Diversys and the Chairman of its Scientific Advisory Board, said, "These patents are incredibly relevant to anyone creating antibodies, antibody fragments or single domains in a test tube and are therefore of tremendous commercial value to Diversys. Single domains represent the basic building blocks of antibodies and it should be possible to string them together in many different ways to make a wide variety of products. The issue of these patents greatly enhances the Diversys portfolio and complements the Winter II patent granted earlier this year in the US."
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Notes to Editors
Diversys Limited was founded in 2000 by Dr Ian Tomlinson and Dr Greg Winter, two world-leading scientists from the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC-LMB), together with MVM Limited, the London-based life sciences investment specialist, and the UK Medical Research Council (MRC). Diversys is developing a range of platform technologies for the in vitro evolution and engineering of recombinant proteins. The field of protein engineering is showing immense potential and is expected to yield both new medicines together with vital diagnostic and proteomic tools. Diversys is pursuing commercialization strategies in all of these target areas.
Greg Winter was a founder and director of Cambridge Antibody Technology. He is currently the Joint Head of the Protein and Nucleic Acid Chemistry Division of the MRC-LMB and Deputy Director of the MRC Centre for Protein Engineering in Cambridge, UK. Dr Winter is responsible for development of the most widely commercialized technologies for the creation of humanized and synthetic antibodies, and developed much of the portfolio of patents (including antibody repertoire, phage antibodies and single domains) that have been licensed to Diversys by the MRC.
Antibodies at the MRC-LMB. In 1976 Drs Milstein and Kohler at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, discovered a way of making mouse monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). They fused the cells in the body that naturally produce antibodies (B-cells) with a cancer cell line, to make a hybrid cell line (or hybridoma) that continuously produces antibodies. As it proved difficult to make human monoclonal antibodies in the same way, several groups, including Greg Winter's at the MRC-LMB, used genetic engineering to "humanize" mouse mAbs. A number of humanized antibodies are already sold as therapeutic drugs, including Herceptin (Genentech) and Synagis (Medimmune), and many others are currently in clinical trials. The technologies described in the Huse/Lerner/Winter and Winter II patents represent the next generation in antibody engineering, enabling the creation of fully human antibodies and single domains. A number of fully human antibodies based on this technology are projected to reach the market by 2005... |
