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Biotech / Medical : VD's Model Portfolio & Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Biomaven who wrote (5304)	7/9/1998 6:19:00 PM
From: Rocketman	Respond to of 9719

does it really say "leas" in the patent? I didn't notice that, what a crack up! Just checked...it sure does. Patent crap like this gets beyond what I care to know about it at this time....this is what experts are for, let's hear from them?????? Rman

To: Biomaven who wrote (5304)	7/9/1998 10:22:00 PM
From: Henry Niman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9719

Peter, Let me try to clarify the OSI patent and the LGND paper that will be in tomorrow's Science. The OSI patent targets the back end of the signal transduction pathway. The patent was filed in 1995 and at that time a great deal of knowledge was known about transcription factors, hormone binding domains, and control of gene expression. To get around all of this prior art (which began a decade prior to the OSI filing), the patent targets non-hormone binding domains. Small molecules can interact with transcription factors and cause allosteric effects (the shape of the partnered dimer is affected or the small molecule affects additional protein complex binding). LGND has focused on these changes in addition to small molecules that act through the hormone binding domain. LGND published such results several years ago and continues to do so, which could cause aditional prior art problems for the new OSI patent. The Science paper that comes out tomorrow focuses on small molecules that act at the front end of the signal transduction pathway. These small molecules actually act outside of the cell by interacting with the extracellular domain of polypeptide hormones. These small molecules could replace most of the therapeutics developed by Biotechs. Instead of making a large polypeptide which is expensive to make and has to be injected, LGND has discovered mimics which can do the same thing. These molecules are very small, can be made and modified cheaply, and can be taken orally. They act outside of the cell and are unrelated to the small molecules described in OSI patent which describes molecules that act in the nucleus of the cell.