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Post by iamaverb on Mar 13, 2016 20:04:39 GMT
Thanks to Irv Arons from ICell for bringing this company and science to everyone's attention late last year. This could be the next major thing. On March 10th a patent interference claim began before a judge as there are two early pioneers claiming the CRISPR technology. Here are two recent excerpts discussing the patent claims. I bought at the recent IPO at $16.00 and accumulated along the way for a very nice gain, though I sold early last week once I boned up on this case. I will await the outcome. www.nature.com/news/how-the-us-crispr-patent-probe-will-play-out-1.19519and this: From: sciencemag.org
Accusations of errors and deception fly in CRISPR patent fight
By Kelly Servick Mar. 8, 2016 , 10:15 AM
..."UC claims that the BI patents don’t fall under the old system, because their filings indicate a mix of pre–16 March and post–16 March inventions. Because the filers checked a box indicating that some claims didn’t have this priority date, they can’t compete with Doudna’s patents in the first place, UC lawyers contend. “I can’t imagine that [BI] would make this mistake, but it’s not impossible,” Noonan says, and if the accusation proves true, “that is Berkeley’s sort of clear-cut, slam-dunk winner.” The UC filing contains a few other “bombshells,” notes law professor Jacob Sherkow of New York Law School in New York City, including an allegation that Zhang committed “inequitable conduct” by misrepresenting his discoveries in patent applications and laying claim to a technology he didn’t yet possess. The lawyers write that Zhang’s group claimed to have used tracrRNA—an RNA strand that helps to activate the DNA-cutting enzyme Cas9—but that he “never demonstrated in his supporting documents that he was in possession of any claimed methods that made use of tracrRNA.” BI “withheld or misrepresented material information with the intent to deceive” the patent office, UC’s filing claims. The document also claims that some of Zhang’s patent left off several co-inventors who apparently contributed to the work. That accusation could invalidate a patent, though it requires that UC show that the omission was the result of "deceptive intent," not just a mistake, Sherkow notes. Lawyers for BI, meanwhile offered a list of claims within their patents that they say don’t correspond to anything in the UC patent applications, and therefore are not at risk of being overturned. They also suggest that some UC claims are invalid because they don’t properly describe how to use the technology—a requirement known as enablement."
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Post by iamaverb on Aug 23, 2016 20:07:56 GMT
I got back into Editas (EDIT) along with Intellia (NTLA) and both have been on the move, especially NTLA. This could be a huge market mover if the FDA current trials prove successful.
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Post by nateb on Aug 24, 2016 0:48:34 GMT
Both are interesting, I just wonder how the patent thing will shake out. Valuations seem very rich too considering where they are in the development process.
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Post by tatshensini on Aug 24, 2016 1:11:20 GMT
I got back into Editas (EDIT) along with Intellia (NTLA) and both have been on the move, especially NTLA. This could be a huge market mover if the FDA current trials prove successful. Same here, sold my KITE at a 20% gain, and bought EDIT @ $19.04 last week....
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Post by JHam on Aug 24, 2016 8:36:35 GMT
I got back into Editas (EDIT) along with Intellia (NTLA) and both have been on the move, especially NTLA. This could be a huge market mover if the FDA current trials prove successful. Same here, sold my KITE at a 20% gain, and bought EDIT @ $19.04 last week.... Well done!
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Post by iamaverb on Sept 23, 2016 4:38:13 GMT
Gene Editing is moving quickly towards being a medical breakthrough with many applications. Why, because of it's simplicity. The system, known as Crispr-Cas9, is embroiled in a high-stakes patent dispute for control over what many scientists believe is a groundbreaking technology that serves as a kind of multipurpose molecular scissors that can cut DNA and make repairs and insert changes into genes. Crispr’s power and versatility, they argue, open the door to new therapies that could potentially correct often intractable genetic diseases. Dr. Irv Arons, who would post on ICell, brought this new technology to everyone's attention a few years ago, and as a blogger, has written articles regarding this technology. Meet Author Irv Arons and Learn More about Gene Therapy and Gene Editing for Eye DiseaseI own, perhaps prematurely, two of the main companies that are embroiled in this patent lawsuit, Editas (EDIT) & Intellia (NTLA), and I believe that whoever triumphs in the patent suit, will make people rich. I understand there will be a decision due sometime late fall. This is an area which serious Biotech investors should keep on their radar From the WSJ Tonight: Link Below Breakthrough Gene Technology Attracts Investors Amid Patent Dispute Deals continue to be signed for gene-editing tool called Crispr-Cas9 Jennifer Doudna, left, of the University of California, Berkeley, and French researcher Emmanuelle Charpentier, center, are allied against Feng Zhang, a scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, in a fight for the rights to the gene-editing tool Crispr. Jennifer Doudna, left, of the University of California, Berkeley, and French researcher Emmanuelle Charpentier, center, are allied against Feng Zhang, a scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, in a fight for the rights to the gene-editing tool Crispr. Last month, Bayer AG opened the doors on a $335 million joint venture with Crispr Therapeutics to develop therapies using a new gene-editing tool. Later this year, rival Editas Medicine Inc. will move into larger digs as it, too, races ahead with a $200 million-plus effort to leverage the gene-editing tool into new drugs. Companies working on this special technology have raised over $600 million since 2013 in venture capital and the public markets, researchers at Montana State University estimated in 2015. More deals continue to be signed, and this month Crispr Therapeutics said it plans to go public and wants to raise up to another $90 million. The flurry belies the fact that the companies don’t actually know yet who owns the intellectual-property rights to the technology. The system, known as Crispr-Cas9, is embroiled in a high-stakes patent dispute for control over what many scientists believe is a groundbreaking technology that serves as a kind of multipurpose molecular scissors that can cut DNA and make repairs and insert changes into genes. Crispr’s power and versatility, they argue, open the door to new therapies that could potentially correct often intractable genetic diseases. There have been other gene-editing tools before, and scientists are working on additional ones. But part of the excitement over the Crispr-Cas9 system is that it is easier to use than previous gene-editing technology. It also can target more than one gene at the same time, making it more efficient. Scientists have high hopes for a new gene-editing technology that could provide them with unprecedented power to rewrite the code of life. WSJ’s Monika Auger reports. (Originally published June 28, 2015) The different Crispr companies are hoping to develop treatments for diseases like hemophilia, cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy, among others. Doctors are planning to test Crispr therapies in cancer. Some scientists are even exploring the application of Crispr to revive extinct species like the woolly mammoth or to modify organs in pigs so they might someday be transplanted into humans. Science is always a fraught, risky enterprise, but even by those standards this current fight to control Crispr-Cas9 is messy. Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley and Emmanuelle Charpentier, then of the University of Vienna, applied in 2013 for a patent for using Crispr-Cas9 to edit genes. So did Feng Zhang, a scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, in Cambridge, Mass., a few months later. But his patent was granted first, in 2014. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is currently hearing a challenge by the Berkeley-Vienna group, which says it invented the gene editor first and should get the rights to the technology. Rewriting the CodeScientists can use the gene-editing technology called Crispr-Cas9 to correct disease-causing mutations. Here’s how it works. (Source: Innovative Genomics Inititative Credit: John Gould/The Wall Street Journal) A chunk of RNA is programmed to look for a specific problem segment of DNA. It is paired with a natural protein called Cas9 taken from bacteria, where it functions as a genetic scalpel. Once inserted into a cell, the RNA/Cas9 combination looks for a DNA sequence that matches its RNA. When it finds a match, the Cas9 cuts both strands of the DNA Repair enzymes can fill and seal the gap in the DNA with new genetic information to change the underlying genetic code. This month, it got even more complicated when ToolGen, a Seoul-based biotech, said it was awarded a patent for Crispr-Cas9 gene editing in Korea. Seokjoong Kim, research director at ToolGen, said the company is also pursuing a claim with the USPTO, though an examiner hasn’t yet deemed the claims patentable. The ToolGen announcement “adds to the uncertainty” facing companies pursuing Crispr, says Brent Babcock, an Orange Country, Calif.-based partner at Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear LLP, and has to make investors wonder, “Who else may come out of the woodwork?” Many players laying claim to the key patent have launched companies to pursue research and licensing, creating a thicket of licensing options for biotechs and institutions to consider, depending on how they want to use the technology. FLURRY OF DEALS The Numbers : Read more about some of the companies that are racing to develop therapies using the Crispr-Cas9 gene-editing system, without waiting to see who wins the patent dispute. Broad’s Dr. Zhang is a co-founder of Editas Medicine. Dr. Charpentier, now of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin, is a co-founder of Crispr Therapeutics, and Dr. Doudna, who helped found and then left Editas, is a co-founder of Caribou Biosciences Inc. and Intellia Therapeutics Inc. And there is a welter of other startups with rights to various uses and other technologies related to Crispr. On Thursday, Monsanto Co. announced it had reached a deal with the Broad Institute to license the gene-editing tool for use in agriculture. The St. Louis, Mo.-based company said the license would deliver an array of crop improvements. Patent experts say companies must decide whether to choose a side from among these, perhaps license from more than one to hedge their bets, or just use the technology and seek a license only when necessary. It is a key question facing many technology-driven businesses, says Elisabeth Evert, an intellectual-property lawyer at Dallas-based Hitchcock Evert, and “at the end of the day, each company will just have to determine their tolerance for risk.” Companies that wait, or license from what turns out to be the losing side, may have to give up more equity or pay a massive fee for a license from the side it bet against. “Spite,” says Jacob S. Sherkow, an associate professor at New York Law School, who has followed the Crispr dispute, “is typically part of any intellectual-property strategy.” Some legal experts said that with the rights in dispute, the risk of getting sued for patent infringement is low, and a company without cash for multiple licenses in the U.S. could be better off pushing ahead with its own research and waiting until the dispute is resolved. At Fulcrum Therapeutics in Cambridge, Mass., which is developing therapies for diseases like Fragile X syndrome and a form of muscular dystrophy, CEO Robert Gould says its scientists didn’t want to wait. Fulcrum was launched earlier this year with $55 million in financing from Third Rock Ventures LLC, also a founding investor in Editas. Fulcrum is working with Horizon Discovery Group, a contract-research organization that has licenses from various parties to use Crispr. Mr. Gould said any drugs that Fulcrum develops “will be the subject of our IP that we protect and it will be our discovery.” A spokeswoman for Crispr Therapeutics says the company doesn’t comment on the patent dispute. Executives and spokesmen for the other companies licensing out Crispr rights expressed confidence in their intellectual property and the ability for drug discovery to move forward. WSJ Article on Gene Editing Patent disputes
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Post by iamaverb on Oct 4, 2016 15:46:05 GMT
EDIT is up 10% today on heavy volume. The fix may be in and a decision on the patent suits may be near. Added more today.
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Post by iamaverb on Oct 19, 2016 18:34:58 GMT
Things are heating up in the field of Gene Editing. Today CRSP went live with an IPO. This company is partly owned by Emmanuelle Charpentier, one of the parties that is contesting patent rights. This is a under reported field of science that once is brought into the light with clinical successes, has the potential give returns ala Regeneron. This is a good write up on the main players in what is bing described as the development of the century. It is well worth the click & read. I own EDIT, NTLA and will buy CRSP once I can determine the direction after the IPO dust settles. What is CrisprCRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. CRISPR is a part of the acquired immune system that protects bacteria and other organisms against attacks by viruses. CRISPRs are regions in a bacterial genome that incorporate a new spacer when a previously unseen virus affects the bacteria. This CRISPR sequence is used to form short mRNAs that attack a matching sequence in the virus and destroy it. In the lab, scientists design and synthesize RNA sequences (guided RNAs) that match a particular DNA sequence. Once injected into the body, these RNA sequences are guided to the target DNA. Certain enzymes like Cas9 nuclease (attached to the guided RNA) then cleave the desired part of the DNA sequence (for example, knocking off a harmful gene on the DNA).
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Post by iamaverb on Nov 17, 2016 16:49:32 GMT
With the first CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing performed on a human by the Chinese recently, gene editing stocks are gathering attention and momentum. CRSP has gained 70% since their IPO last month, 9% today so far, though I expect CRSP is riding today's news wave. EDIT and NTLA are active also. I own all three and I believe any news is good news when it comes to this potentially breakthrough technology. EDIT and NTLA are locked into a Patent Rights lawsuit, and I am betting a little heavier in favor of EDIT prevailing. Though, If this gene editing procedure truly does work, a rising tide will lift all boats.
If and when there is a breakthrough, I intend to sell vast amounts of my O&G stocks and ride the wave.
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Post by iamaverb on Dec 2, 2016 22:43:07 GMT
Investing in the latest Gene Editing companies is getting really, really interesting. I advise to keep these companies on your radar.
Intellia gears up for human testing of CRISPR with new HQ, set to double staffers by Ben Adams | Dec 2, 2016 3:51am
After getting off its $100 million-plus IPO in the summer, gene editing biotech Intellia Therapeutics is getting ready for human tests of its preclinical CRISPR tech with new digs designed to help bolster its research capabilities.
The biotech, which has the backing and partnerships of the likes of Atlas, Novartis and Regeneron, is on the move as it heads over to its new lab facilities at 40 Erie Street, in Cambridge, MA.
“The field of genome editing is rapidly evolving and our work to develop therapies for patients requires that we have the infrastructure necessary for R&D growth and prepare for preclinical studies and clinical trials,” said Dr. Nessan Bermingham, CEO and founder of Intellia Therapeutics.
“To reach our goals, we continue to recruit top talent and ensure our quality workforce has the appropriate facilities and tools necessary to translate CRISPR/Cas9 into life-transforming products.”
The new facility is deisgned to allow Intellia to push on with its scientific programs and to “continue to leverage our Massachusetts location alongside leading biotech research and academic institutions,” Dr. Bermingham added.
The new Intellia headquarters was specifically designed to house its growing R&D, operations teams and admin staff, the biotech said, as it heads towards clinical testing.
Intellia added that it will also be maintaining ops at its current facility at 130 Brookline Street in Cambridge. The new research digs will however boost Intellia’s total lab and office space from the current 15,000 sq. ft. to more than 80,000 sq. ft., allowing it to double its team to more than 200 employees.
It got off its $108 million public offering back in May, money which will be used to push on with R&D programs for its candidates through to the submission of at least one IND, according to its SEC-1 filing at the time.
The biotech also said it will splash out on the “acquisition of businesses or technologies” for its research programs.
This includes progressing its in vivo and ex vivo pipeline product candidates, as well as further developing its delivery technologies and CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing platform.
One of its in vivo candidates, which targets transthyretin amyloidosis (ATTR), a life-threatening disease caused by misfolded transthyretin proteins that accumulate as amyloid fibrils in multiple organs, is being co-developed with Regeneron.
This is one potential candidate that could be advanced to IND-enabling trials in the next 12 to 24 months, according to the company.
In the ex vivo field, Intellia is working with Novartis on a knockout repair insertion technology using hematopoietic stem cells, with a first IND expected to be submitted in 2018.
Rival CRISPR co Editas, which also went public this year, has already said it aims to have its first program for a rare form of blindness called Leber congenital amaurosis in clinical trials by next year.
In yet another headline today: New CRISPR Experiment Corrects Clotting in Mice
The future of gene editing is slowly approaching great promise. Recent developments surrounding CRISPR/Cas9 showed its efficiency and promise in correcting disease-causing mutations. For the first time, it was used to develop a dual gene therapy to treat hemophilia B in mice, which normally leads to a defective clotting protein.
This proves the potential of CRISPR as a method of in vivo genome editing not just for conditions such as hemophilia but potentially other diseases as well.
And also today it was reported:Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies say they have partially restored vision in genetically blind rats with a new gene editing technique. If proven safe, the method could greatly extend the use of gene therapy in people.
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Post by iamaverb on Dec 5, 2016 5:27:54 GMT
I don't have time to post important pertinent information so I cut and pasted an email chain I had over the past weekend with an investor sister of mine and a top molecular bioscience patent law professor. Look for a lot of activity in the 3 listed CRISPR-Cas9 stocks come Tuesday or Wednesday. If any members of this forum are in the DC area, you may want to make this patent hearing. XXXX, I am flying out tomorrow to attend this patent hearing in Alexandria on Tuesday. I wrote the following email to a Top Patent Law Professor, the Go-To person for understanding this case. The outcome of the USPTO’s decision will reverberate throughout the market for years to come. I am hoping that in the debriefing Jacob and the other panelist give will shed some professional light on the who might eventually prevail in regards to the CRISPR-Cas9 patent rights. XXXX, I believe I mentioned these companies to you before, and I strongly suggest you read up on them starting with their websites, and watch the attached video. I could be wrong, but the upside appears to be enormous for this breakthrough technology. CRISPR VideoI own all three companies. Editas (EDIT)- which was founded by Feng Zhang out of Harvard, and holds the patent as of now. Crispr (CRSP)-which was founded by Emmanuelle Charpentier who exclusively licensed her rights to two new companies: • CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP) – rights to use the technology to treat human disease • ERS Genomics – all rights except use of the technology to treat human disease Intellia (NTLA)- A company founded by the two universities that co share rights with Charpentier. This is an amazing area of medicine, and the patent battle only adds to the intrigue. Even though a rising tide will lift all boats, I am trying to get a fix on who might prevail once this case is decided so I can prepare my boat to be lifted the highest. If you decide to take any positions and want me to keep you informed, let me know, I also will be posting on the Biotech forum. Speaking of which, did you maintain positions in the O&G industry? Bill On Sat, Dec 3, 2016 at 2:45 PM Bill Ferguson <bill@XXXX.com> wrote: Jacob, I am a retired businessman and out of curiosity I am planning on attending the Editas / Intellia patent lawsuit hearing in Alexandria on Tuesday. Recently I read where you are following this case closely and I was wondering if you or any of your associates were planning on attending as I would like to have a conversation with you. Regards, Bill Ferguson From: Jacob S. Sherkow [mailto:jacob.sherkow@XXXX] Sent: Saturday, 03 December 2016 2:03 PM To: Bill Ferguson <bill@XXX> Subject: Re: Crispr Gene Editing Bill, I will be there, along with a few other law professors and lots of media. I have some details below. We're also doing a debriefing panel at AU if you'd like to attend. I have to say, I'm pretty swamped early next week with the hearing but let's get in touch Wednesday or Thursday if you can. Good hearing from you. --Jake Dear Colleagues, I'm writing to provide you with some details concerning the CRISPR interference oral arguments being held at the USPTO's headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia on Tues., Dec. 6. at 10:00 a.m. In addition, to give some context and analysis of the oral arguments, I will be chairing a debriefing panel following the proceedings at American University Washington College of Law at 12:30 p.m. Information about both is below. Oral Arguments The arguments themselves will begin at 10:00 a.m. and are being held at the USPTO's Madison Building, in Hearing Room A, 600 Dulany Street, Alexandria, VA 22314. Entrance to the hearing room will begin at 9:30 a.m., and interested members of the public are encouraged to line up before then. You will need a government-issued, enhanced photo ID to enter. Surprisingly, drivers licenses from several states--including New York--do not meet the USPTO's requirements. For a list of unacceptable state drivers licenses, see here (https://www.uspto.gov/page/new-rules-may-adjust-how-some-visitors-can-enter-uspto-buildings). If you fall into this category, bring your passport. Seating for the hearing is first-come, first-seated. There are not seats reserved for members of the media, with or without credentials. You may bring your phones into the hearing room but they must be turned completely off while inside. The hearing room is the largest in the Madison Building; it seats 69 people, including the parties and their counsel. This typically leaves roughly 50 seats to the public. I don't suspect the oral arguments will be at capacity, but it's tough to predict. There will not be an overflow room. The arguments are slated for 20 minutes per side, i.e., 20 minutes for the University of California and 20 minutes for the Broad. No live testimony will take place. Rather, the arguments--like arguments before the Supreme Court--will be attorney argument focused on providing clarity to the panel of the motions already submitted in the interference. I do not suspect (indeed, I would be surprised if any) of the inventors (Doudna, Zhang, or Charpentier) were to attend. I suspect that oral arguments will be substantially completed by 10:45 a.m. For what it's worth, I plan to line up outside the Madison Building around 8:30 a.m. or so. You're free to join me in line, if you want. I should be easy to find. Nonetheless, if you have questions about the proceedings day-of, and wish to get in contact with me, e-mail is your best bet. Debriefing Panel American University's Washington College of Law is generously hosting a debriefing panel immediately following the oral arguments at 12:30 p.m. The debriefing panel will provide some legal and historical context to the oral arguments earlier that day, and analysis from the following commentators: Jacob S. Sherkow, Associate Professor, Innovation Center for Law and Technology, New York Law School Robert Cook-Deegan, Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, Arizona State University Mark Rohrbaugh, Special Advisor for Technology Transfer, National Institutes of Health The panel will speak for roughly 40 minutes, and then field questions from the audience until 1:30 p.m. Following the panel, there will be a brief reception until 2:30 p.m. By coincidence, the Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in another patent case (Life Technologies Corp. v. Promega Corp.) that same day, and the College of Law will be hosting another debriefing panel on those arguments at 4:00 p.m. You are, of course, free to stick around to hear those remarks as well. The College of Law is located at 4300 Nebraska Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20016. I do not yet have a room number for the debriefing panel, but will be e-mailing one to you shortly. For those of you planning on driving, my understanding is that parking is very limited around AU. * * * I hope to see you all in Washington soon. Please e-mail me if you have any questions about the above. In the meantime, have a Happy Thanksgiving! --Jake
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Post by captsmith77 on Dec 5, 2016 8:44:08 GMT
I likely won't have any free funds for a while as I'm tied up in another revolution (3dprint) that will take a while to realize any gains, but still, thanks for sharing as it's an interesting development of a company I had never heard of before. Wish you and others invested with this one good luck.
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Post by iamaverb on Dec 5, 2016 20:50:45 GMT
I am sitting at IAH awaiting a weather delayed airline and I will post on Tuesday if there is anything of interest that comes from the hearing and the subsequent debriefing. In the meantime, the internet, starting with the WSJ and on, is already exploding with articles of tomorrow's hearing. In my opinion, investing early on in CRISPR-Cas9 could turn out to be a once in a lifetime opportunity. Here is an article from NPR tonight: The high-stakes fight over who invented a technology that could revolutionize medicine and agriculture heads to a courtroom Tuesday. A gene-editing technology called CRISPR-cas9 could be worth billions of dollars. But it's not clear who owns the idea. U.S. patent judges will hear oral arguments to help untangle this issue, which has far more at stake than your garden-variety patent dispute. "This is arguably the biggest biotechnology breakthrough in the past 30 or 40 years, and controlling who owns the foundational intellectual property behind that is consequentially pretty important," says Jacob Sherkow, a professor at the New York Law College. (Jacob is the Law Professor I corresponded with in my email.) The CRISPR-cas9 technology allows scientists to make precise edits in DNA, and that ability could lead to whole new medical therapies, research tools and even new crop varieties. "Part of what makes it such a fun spectator sport is the amount of money that's at stake," says Robert Underwood, at the Boston law firm McDermott Will & Emery. "These could potentially be the most valuable biotech patents ever."
The dispute pits high-prestige universities and well-regarded scientists against one another. On one side of the dispute are research collaborators Jennifer Doudna at the University of California, Berkeley and her European colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier (currently at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin). "When they filed their patent application [in 2012], they did a great job disclosing how to use CRISPR for bacteria, but were a little lighter on details about how to use CRISPR in the cells of higher organisms" such as human cells, Sherkow says. "Later in 2012, Feng Zhang at the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard files his patent application that gives a pretty detailed description about how to use CRISPR in the cells of higher organisms," Sherkow continues. And since the most important use of the technology is its ability to edit DNA in higher organisms, the real battle is over who can claim that invention. Zhang's patent went through the process faster, so it was issued first. But when the Berkeley patent came up for a decision, that created what's known in patent parlance as an "interference." So now the patent office needs to sort out exactly what the invention is and who invented it first. "The dispute largely does appear like a winner-take-all affair," Sherkow says. But the patent court could decide that there are distinct inventions, each meriting its own patents. Or it could decide that it's not patentable at all, for various reasons. "The other thing that could happen is the patents could be made moot by other discoveries," says Anette Breindl, senior science editor at the trade journal BioWorld. "I'm sure the existing patents are written to be broad, but there could be new discoveries that just get around those patents." The stakes are enormous. Breindl says three companies built around these patents already have a billion dollars of investment behind them, and a fourth company has a stake in the technology that could be worth $2 billion. The scientists themselves stand to gain a great deal — and so do their universities, which are listed on the patents as well. Robert Cook Deegan, at Arizona State University's School for the Future of Innovation in Society, says regardless of how this legal battle comes out, academic researchers can still use the CRISPR technology without worrying about ownership rights, "but if you're doing any research that might eventually be commercially valuable well, then you've got a problem." Those researchers would need to license the technology's rightful owner, whoever that ends up being, "and the concern is how many licenses you're going to have to pick up, and if there's going to be one dominant patent that everybody has to license from a particular firm," he says. Some companies have already placed their bets, and they've licensed the right to use CRISPR from one or the other of the companies involved in the patent battle. If that patent evaporates, Underwood says, "I don't think you'd get your money back." And any inventions based on the patent wouldn't be protected, or possibly legal to sell. So companies in this field are anxiously awaiting the outcome of the patent dispute. Tuesday's hearing is just one step in a process that's likely to last through 2017. In court, the two sides are expected to give brief answers to questions from the patent judges and jockey for position, trying to get the case framed in the way most favorable to their interests. "Whatever the resolution is, if there's no settlement, we can expect appeals that will last for years," he says. And, on top of the patent dispute, scientists widely assume that CRISPR will earn Nobel Prizes for the scientists who are ultimately recognized as the inventors of this transformative technology.Scientists Battle In Court Over Lucrative Patents For Gene-Editing Tool
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Post by iamaverb on Dec 6, 2016 16:19:57 GMT
Just finished up with the hearing at the United States patent and trademark office which is located just outside of Washington DC. I got here at 8:15, an hour and 45 minutes before they would let you in and the line had already formed to capacity. They had to use three overflow rooms to handle everybody and still many people were turned away from the hearings. I had the chance to speak to multiple patent attorneys and journalist. I spoke with journalist from Nature, Science, Bloomberg, and other news sources I was not familiar with. The girl I spoke with from Nature remembered Advanced Cell Technology and we discussed stem cell research. Exciting day so far, and I am heading over to the debriefing and panel discussion of what we just witnessed.
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Post by iamaverb on Dec 7, 2016 4:29:16 GMT
This article by the women writer from Nature nicely details today's hearing and her interviews with everybody at the subsequent panel discussion. CRISPR heavyweights battle in US patent courtToday I felt I was walking amongst giants, which helped me to formulate my investment strategy going forward.
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Post by iamaverb on Dec 7, 2016 18:30:09 GMT
This article by the women writer from Nature nicely details today's hearing and her interviews with everybody at the subsequent panel discussion. CRISPR heavyweights battle in US patent courtToday I felt I was walking amongst giants, which helped me to formulate my investment strategy going forward. And speaking of Giants, the CRISPR Pioneers were on the short list today for Time's Person of the year. They were also the frontrunner for the Nobel Prize but were passed up until such time as this patent lawsuit is finalized and a doctor is named. TIME Inc. Man of the Year Short List. The CRISPR Pioneers.Dr. Carl June’s lab at the University of Pennsylvania looks like any other biology research hub. There are tidy rows of black-topped workbenches flanked by shelves bearing boxes of pipettes and test tubes. There’s ad hoc signage marking the different workstations. And there are postdocs buzzing around, calibrating scales, checking incubators and smearing solutions and samples onto small glass slides. Appearances aside, what June is attempting to do here, on the eighth floor of the glass-encased Smilow Center for Translational Research in Philadelphia, is anything but ordinary. He’s built a career trying to improve the odds for people with intractable end-stage disease, and now, in the university’s brand-new cell-processing lab, he’s preparing to launch his most ambitious study yet: he’s going to try to treat 18 people with stubborn cancers, and he’s going to do it using CRISPR, the most controversial new tool in medicine. Developed just four short years ago by two groups—Jennifer Doudna, a molecular and cell biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, together with Emmanuelle Charpentier, now at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin; and Feng Zhang, a biomedical engineer at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT—CRISPR allows scientists to easily and inexpensively find and alter virtually any piece of DNA in any species. In 2016 alone it was used to edit the genes of vegetables, sheep, mosquitoes and all kinds of cell samples in labs. Now, even as some scientists call for patience and extreme caution, there’s a worldwide race to push the limits of CRISPR’s capabilities. June’s ultimate goal is to test CRISPR’s greatest potential: its ability to treat diseases in humans. “Before we were kind of flying in the dark when we were making gene changes,” he says of earlier attempts at genetic tinkering. “With CRISPR, I came to the conclusion that this technology needs to be tested in humans.” The trial, which will start treating patients in a few months, is the first to use this powerful technique in this way. It represents the most extensive manipulation of the human genome ever attempted. Soon, June’s 18 trial patients will become the first people in the world to be treated with CRISPR’d cells—in this case, cells genetically edited to fight cancer. Like many people with cancer, the patients have run out of options. So, building on work by Doudna, Charpentier and Zhang, June’s team will extract their T cells, a kind of immune cell, and use CRISPR to alter three genes in those cells, essentially transforming them into superfighters. The patients will then be reinfused with the cancer-fighting T cells to see if they do what they’re supposed to do: seek and destroy cancerous tumors. A lot of hope hangs on the outcome of the trial, but whether it succeeds or fails, it will provide scientists with critical information about what can go right and wrong when they try to rewrite the genetic code in humans. The hope is that studies like June’s will bear out CRISPR’s therapeutic potential, leading to the development of radical new therapies not just for people with the cancers being studied but for all of them, as well as for genetic diseases such as sickle-cell anemia and cystic fibrosis, and chronic conditions like Type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s. It may sound far-fetched, but studies like this one are an enormous first step in that direction. How CRISPR DNA-Editing Works A brief guide to a ground-breaking new technology. Using CRISPR on humans is still hugely controversial, in part because it’s so easy. The fact that it allows scientists to efficiently edit any gene—for some cancers, but also potentially for a predisposition for red hair, for being overweight, for being good at math—worries ethicists because of what could happen if it gets into the wrong hands. As of now, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), by far the world’s largest sponsor of scientific research, will not fund studies using CRISPR on human embryos. And any new way of altering genes in human cells must get ethics and safety approval by the NIH, regardless of who is paying for it. (The NIH also opposes the use of CRISPR on so-called germ-line cells—those in an egg, sperm or embryo—since any such changes would be permanent and heritable.) To fund his study, June was able to attract support from Sean Parker, the former Facebook executive and Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind Napster. Parker recently founded the $250 million Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, a collaboration among six major cancer centers, and June’s study is its first ambitious undertaking. “We need to take big, ambitious bets to advance cancer treatment,” says Parker. “We’re trying to lead the way in doing more aggressive, cutting-edge stuff that couldn’t get funded if we weren’t around.” That’s not to say June’s study will necessarily cure these cancers. “Either it’s back to the drawing board,” he says, “or everyone goes forward and studies a wide variety of other diseases that could potentially be fixed.” In reality, both things are probably true. Even if June’s study doesn’t work as he hopes, experts still agree it will be a matter of months—not years—before other privately funded human studies get launched in the U.S. and abroad. An ongoing patent battle over who owns the lucrative technology hasn’t stopped investors from pouring millions into CRISPR companies. So simple and inexpensive is the technique, and so frenzied is the medical community about its potential, that it would be foolish to bet on anything else. “With a technology like CRISPR,” says Doudna, “you’ve lit a fire.” A Year of Progress CRISPR’s journey from lab bench to cancer treatment may seem quick. After all, as recently as a couple of years ago only a minuscule number of people even knew what clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats—that’s longhand for CRISPR—was. But the technology is at least hundreds of millions of years old. It was bacteria that originally used CRISPR, as a survival mechanism to fend off infection by viruses. The ultimate freeloaders, viruses never bothered developing their own reproductive system, preferring instead to insert their genetic material into that of other cells—including bacteria. Bacteria fought back, holding on to snippets of a virus’ genes when they were infected. The bacteria would then surround these viral DNA fragments with a genetic sequence that effectively cut them out altogether. Bacteria have been performing that clever evolutionary stunt for millennia, but it wasn’t until the early 2000s that food scientists at a Danish yogurt company realized just how clever the bacterial system was when they noticed that their cultures were turning too sour. They discovered that the cultures were CRISPRing invaders, altering the taste considerably. It made for bad dairy, but the scientific discovery was immediately recognized as a big one. About a decade later, in 2012, Doudna and Charpentier tweaked the system to make it more standardized and user-friendly, and showed that not just bacterial DNA but any piece of DNA has this ability. That was a game changer. Scientists have been mucking with plant, animal and human DNA since its structure was first discovered by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953. But altering genes, especially in deliberate, directed ways, has never been easy. “The idea of gene correction is not new at all,” says June. “But before CRISPR it just never worked well enough so that people could do it routinely.” Within months of Doudna’s and Charpentier’s discovery, Zhang showed that the technique worked to cut human DNA at specified places. With that, genetics changed overnight. Now scientists had a tool allowing them, at least in theory, to wield unprecedented control over any genome, making it possible to delete bits of DNA, add snippets of genetic material and even insert entirely new pieces of code. Now, that theoretical potential took shape in a remarkable array of real-world applications. CRISPR produced the first mushroom that doesn’t brown, the first dogs with DNA-boosted cells giving them a comic-book-like musculature, and a slew of nutritionally superior crops that are already on their way to market. There are even efforts to use CRISPR’d mosquitoes to fight Zika and malaria. On the human side, progress has been even more dramatic. In a lab, scientists have successfully snipped out HIV from infected human cells and demonstrated that the process works in infected mice and rats as well. They’re making headway in correcting the genetic defect behind sickle-cell anemia, which stands to actually cure the disease. They’re making equally promising progress in treating rare forms of genetic blindness and muscular dystrophy. And in perhaps the most controversial application of CRISPR to date, in 2016 the U.K. approved the first use of the technology in healthy human embryos for research. At the Francis Crick Institute in London, developmental biologist Kathy Niakan is using CRISPR to try to understand one of the more enduring mysteries of human development: what goes wrong at the earliest stages, causing an embryo to die and a pregnancy to fail. To be clear, Niakan will not attempt to implant the embryos in a human; her research is experimental, and the embryos are destroyed seven days after the studies begin. Like Niakan, June is looking for answers to one of human biology’s more vexing problems: why the immune system, designed to fight disease, is nearly useless against cancer. It’s an issue that’s kept him up at night since 2001, when his wife, not responding to the many treatments she tried, died of ovarian cancer. “This trial is about two things: safety and feasibility,” he says. It’s about testing whether it’s even possible to successfully edit these immune cells to make them do—in human bodies, not a petri dish—what he wants them to do. Either way, the study will yield critical information, paving the way for eventual new treatment options that are more targeted, less brutal and far smarter against tumors than systemwide chemotherapy will ever be. As much as has been done in 2016, this is only the beginning of a kind of medicine that stands to effectively change the course of human history. “CRISPR is an empowering technology with broad applications in both basic science and clinical medicine,” says Dr. Francis Collins, director of the NIH. “It will allow us to tackle problems that for a long time we probably felt were out of our reach.” The Hurdles Ahead Because it’s so easy to use, Zhang, along with the other CRISPR pioneers, says careful thought should be given to where and how it gets employed. “For the most part I don’t think we are getting ahead of ourselves with the CRISPR applications,” he says. “What we need to do is really engage the public, to make sure people understand what are the really exciting potential applications and what are the immediate limitations of the technology, so we really are applying it and supporting it in the right way.” Regulatory scrutiny is a given with CRISPR, and any new tool for rewriting human DNA requires federal approval. For the current Penn trial, June got the green light from the NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, established in the 1980s to assess the safety of any first-in-humans gene-therapy trials. While there are still dangers involved in any kind of gene therapy—the changes may happen in unexpected places, for example, or the edits may have unanticipated side effects—scientists have learned more about the best way to make the genetic changes, and how to deliver them more safely. So far, animal studies show CRISPR provides enough control that unexpected negative effects are rare—at least so far. The role of regulatory oversight is less clear when the technique is used to alter food crops. Even before June’s patients get infused with CRISPR’d T cells, farmers in Argentina and Minnesota will plant the world’s first gene-edited crops for market. CRISPR provides an unparalleled ability to insert almost any trait into plants—drought or pest resistance, more of this vitamin or less of that nutritional villain du jour. Dupont, for instance, is putting the finishing touches on its first drought-resistant corn, and biotech company Calyxt has created a potato that doesn’t produce cancerous compounds when fried; it’s also planting its first crop of soy plants modified to produce higher amounts of healthy oleic-acid fats. These edits involve deleting or amping up existing genes—not adding new ones from other species—and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has said this kind of gene-edited food crop is not significantly different from unaltered crops and therefore does not need to be regulated differently. In the coming months, the National Academy of Sciences is expected to issue guidelines that might address some of the challenges posed by CRISPR, focusing on how and when to proceed with developing new disease treatments. The report is expected to launch much-needed discussion in the scientific community and among the public as well. Whether more regulation will eventually be required likely depends on how far scientists push the limits of their editing—and how comfortable consumers and advocacy groups are with those studies. As CRISPR goes mainstream in medicine and agriculture, profound moral and ethical questions will arise. Few would argue against using CRISPR to treat terminal cancer patients, but what about treating chronic diseases? Or disabilities? If sickle-cell anemia can be corrected with CRISPR, should obesity, which drives so many life-threatening illnesses? Who decides where that line ought to be drawn? Questions like these weigh heavily on June and all of CRISPR’s pioneering scientists. “Having this technology enables humans to alter human evolution,” says Doudna. “Thinking about all the different ways it can be employed, both for good and potentially not for very good, I felt it would be irresponsible as someone involved in the earliest stages of the technology not to get out and talk about it.” Last year, Doudna invited other leaders in genetics to a summit to address the immediate concerns about applying CRISPR to human genes. The group agreed to a voluntary temporary moratorium on using CRISPR to edit the genes of human embryos that would be inserted into a woman and brought to term, since the full array of CRISPR’s consequences isn’t known yet. (Any current research using human embryos, including Niakan’s, is lab-only.) For researchers like June and Niakan, Doudna and Zhang, and others, proceeding carefully with CRISPR is the only way forward. But proceed they will. The sooner more answers emerge, the sooner CRISPR can mature and begin to deliver on its promise. “There are thousands of applications for CRISPR,” says June. “The sky is the limit. But we have to be careful.” TIME Inc. The CRISPR Pioneers.
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Post by iamwhatiam on Dec 7, 2016 20:45:37 GMT
This article by the women writer from Nature nicely details today's hearing and her interviews with everybody at the subsequent panel discussion. CRISPR heavyweights battle in US patent courtToday I felt I was walking amongst giants, which helped me to formulate my investment strategy going forward. Thanks for all your work on this iam. Since hearing all the different sides of the patent argument over the last day or two, is there one CRISPR-related company you think may come out on top in all of this? It seems like the burden of proof is on UC, so the BI (EDIT, right?) company may have the advantage at this point? However, the valuation of CRSP seems to indicate that it's in a better position than EDIT. Is this why you've made, and will be making further bets on all the major players, because it's very hard to tell at this stage? I like cheaper stocks so EDIT and NTLA seem to better value at the moment versus CRSP. When you add the apparent strength of the BI position, based on the article from nature, it would seem EDIT is the play? But what the heck do I know. Thanks for sharing any thoughts, iamwhatiam
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Post by iamaverb on Dec 8, 2016 1:54:10 GMT
The definitive definitive answer to your question is there in not a definitive answer. Almost to a man (lawyers, professors) thought that there will be no winner take all, and that most likely patents will be split up, all though EDIT/Broad might receive the more lucrative patent (my opinion). Or not. I am hedged with all three companies, but will wait it out until we receive the answer to the billion dollar question. The news will leak out in advance of the final decision, whenever that is, and the stock price will begin to rise on the day of. I was told by the experts that the USPTO will contact council for the two sides (leak #1), and then they will contact their respected clients (leak#2) and then the companies will release a press release (leak#3) either after hours or pre-market. No matter what, one or more of these companies stock price will rise and will continue to do so for years, much like Regeneron (REGN). The same goes if the two sides enter back into settlement talks and the share prices rise for all in advance of the agreement. The safe bet is to buy a token amount of shares in all three just to keep them on your radar. Berkley must prove the "Reasonable Person" legal concept which says the any reasonable person with reasonable skill could have taken the CRISPR concept Berkley applied for and improve upon it, and not one that required extraordinary skills and means that created something that the other side could not and did not do. Confused yet? The panel challenged Berkley over this assertion multiple times and this led many to believe they might be favoring The Broad Institute and Zhang. But who knows. The next step, speculated to be in February, will be either a final decision or to take it to step two, which is the testimonial phase. This will happen if the Judges decide that yesterdays hearing and arguments, along with the 900 pages of documents submitted are not enough to make the final determination on. All I know is I will probably be willing to go all in on the moment a decision is made.
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Post by tatshensini on Dec 8, 2016 5:51:29 GMT
The definitive definitive answer to your question is there in not a definitive answer. Almost to a man (lawyers, professors) thought that there will be no winner take all, and that most likely patents will be split up, all though EDIT/Broad might receive the more lucrative patent (my opinion). Or not. I am hedged with all three companies, but will wait it out until we receive the answer to the billion dollar question. The news will leak out in advance of the final decision, whenever that is, and the stock price will begin to rise on the day of. I was told by the experts that the USPTO will contact council for the two sides (leak #1), and then they will contact their respected clients (leak#2) and then the companies will release a press release (leak#3) either after hours or pre-market. No matter what, one or more of these companies stock price will rise and will continue to do so for years, much like Regeneron (REGN). The same goes if the two sides enter back into settlement talks and the share prices rise for all in advance of the agreement. The safe bet is to buy a token amount of shares in all three just to keep them on your radar. Berkley must prove the "Reasonable Person" legal concept which says the any reasonable person with reasonable skill could have taken the CRISPR concept Berkley applied for and improve upon it, and not one that required extraordinary skills and means that created something that the other side could not and did not do. Confused yet? The panel challenged Berkley over this assertion multiple times and this led many to believe they might be favoring The Broad Institute and Zhang. But who knows. The next step, speculated to be in February, will be either a final decision or to take it to step two, which is the testimonial phase. This will happen if the Judges decide that yesterdays hearing and arguments, along with the 900 pages of documents submitted are not enough to make the final determination on. All I know is I will probably be willing to go all in on the moment a decision is made. I bought Editas on the logic that : The Broad has hedged its bets by filing 13 patents related to CRISPR. Several of these deal with an alternative CRISPR system in which the DNA-cutting enzyme is taken from a different species of bacteria. Because it was developed independently, Sherkow doubts that Berkeley could claim any rights to it. Thanks iamaverb for being there and your time spent...
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Post by iamaverb on Dec 9, 2016 4:34:43 GMT
The definitive definitive answer to your question is there in not a definitive answer. Almost to a man (lawyers, professors) thought that there will be no winner take all, and that most likely patents will be split up, all though EDIT/Broad might receive the more lucrative patent (my opinion). Or not. I am hedged with all three companies, but will wait it out until we receive the answer to the billion dollar question. The news will leak out in advance of the final decision, whenever that is, and the stock price will begin to rise on the day of. I was told by the experts that the USPTO will contact council for the two sides (leak #1), and then they will contact their respected clients (leak#2) and then the companies will release a press release (leak#3) either after hours or pre-market. No matter what, one or more of these companies stock price will rise and will continue to do so for years, much like Regeneron (REGN). The same goes if the two sides enter back into settlement talks and the share prices rise for all in advance of the agreement. The safe bet is to buy a token amount of shares in all three just to keep them on your radar. Berkley must prove the "Reasonable Person" legal concept which says the any reasonable person with reasonable skill could have taken the CRISPR concept Berkley applied for and improve upon it, and not one that required extraordinary skills and means that created something that the other side could not and did not do. Confused yet? The panel challenged Berkley over this assertion multiple times and this led many to believe they might be favoring The Broad Institute and Zhang. But who knows. The next step, speculated to be in February, will be either a final decision or to take it to step two, which is the testimonial phase. This will happen if the Judges decide that yesterdays hearing and arguments, along with the 900 pages of documents submitted are not enough to make the final determination on. All I know is I will probably be willing to go all in on the moment a decision is made. I bought Editas on the logic that : The Broad has hedged its bets by filing 13 patents related to CRISPR. Several of these deal with an alternative CRISPR system in which the DNA-cutting enzyme is taken from a different species of bacteria. Because it was developed independently, Sherkow doubts that Berkeley could claim any rights to it. Thanks iamaverb for being there and your time spent... I'm glad I had the opportunity to go to the hearing as it turned out to be quality time for my investments. I am more heavily weighted in Editas myself for many of the same reasons. Dr. Doudna is directly related to CRSP, and lately it has been steadily rising, but the volume level shows it is thinly traded compared to EDIT and even NTLA. My only hope is this case gets settled sooner than later for the benefit of the science and investors.
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