Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Biotech / Medical : Gene therapy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mike head who wrote (142)	9/7/1999 3:16:00 AM
From: scaram(o)uche	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 319

Mike: I'm not even going to get started on this. The issues are mucked up, and it's never seemed worth my time and effort to try to understand the situation. There was extensive discussion here at SI some months back, and Pseudo Biologist linked to some good discussion at Yahoo as well. I'll just sort of give perspective...... When I was trying to humanize an antibody, I went to Greg Winter at MRC Cambridge and to PDLI. The other players at that time were Genentech and Celltech (the "Boss" and "Adair" patents). If Dr. Winter didn't like your project, it made little difference..... MRC had established a "Collaborative Centre" at Mill Hill and you could contract with them to apply Winter-like procedures to humanize an anti-bananas MAb if you liked. You pays your money, you gets your MAb. Of course, nothing could be as complex as this without a little extra spice..... Winter didn't particularly appreciated MRC running with his procedures, and he was working independently with a company called Scotgen. Scotgen subsequently sublicensed the Winter procedures and promptly went bankrupt. It didn't seem to help that Mary Bendig and Chris Hentschel, the husband-wife team running the Collaborative Centre, had come from Celltech. So..... I buzzed around and visited MRC/Cambrige, Celltech, MRC/Mill Hill and PDLI. I came to the conclusion that one had a ray of hope for patent protection working with PDLI, Celltech and/or Mill Hill. Confused? Wait, there's more..... PDLI and Celltech cross-licensed certain patent rights of the if and when variety. However, I believe that PDLI only obtained rights to one of the two Celltech patent applications. Genentech is in the thick of this, but, frankly, I've never really understood what it is that they contributed. (aside from more confusion, that is) So.... the perspective...... Celltech had two of the fundamental patent applications and license to a (the?) third. I believe that interference proceedings began sometime around the birth of Christ, and should be resolved by the time hell freezes. Hope that helps. I'll leave it to PB or another bookmark junky to bring us to more rational commentary. Rick