By Donald Zuhn ---
Last week, MorphoSys AG announced that it had been granted U.S. Patent No. 7,264,963. The '963 patent, which relates to the preparation of a library of human-derived antibody genes by the use of synthetic consensus sequences that cover the structural repertoire of antibodies encoded in the human genome, is the twelfth U.S. patent to be awarded to the Munich, Germany-based biotech company.
According to the statement released by MorphoSys, the '963 patent provides extended protection to the company's "core technology" by capturing MorphoSys's HuCAL (Human Combinatorial Antibody Library) modular system at the DNA level. MorphoSys' HuCAL libraries, which the company currently markets as HuCAL GOLD, comprise diverse, fully human synthetic antibodies that are engineerable through their modular complementarity determining region (CDR) design.
The '963 patent issued from U.S. Application No. 09/490,064, filed January 24, 2000, and claims the benefit of U.S. Application No. 09/025,769, filed February 18, 1998, which issued as U.S. Patent No. 6,300,064, and International Application No. PCT/EP96/03647, filed August 19, 1995. Representative independent claims 1 and 5 of the '963 patent recite:
1. A modular replicable vector, comprising a plurality of vector modules, wherein each vector module is (a) flanked by DNA cleavage sites unique within said vector, and (b) essentially devoid of DNA cleavage sites comprised in a nucleotide sequence selected from the group consisting of V-kappa-1 (SEQ ID NO: 42), V-kappa-2 (SEQ ID NO: 44), V-kappa-3 (SEQ ID NO: 46), V-kappa-4 (SEQ ID NO: 48), V-lambda-1 (SEQ ID NO: 50), V-lambda-2 (SEQ ID NO: 52), V-lambda-3 (SEQ ID NO: 54), VH1A (SEQ ID NO: 56), VH1B (SEQ ID NO: 58), VH2 (SEQ ID NO: 60), VH3 (SEQ ID NO: 62), VH4 (SEQ ID NO: 64), VH5 (SEQ ID NO: 66), and VH6 (SEQ ID NO: 68) at the boundaries between each consensus framework region and each complementarity determining region.
5. A modular replicable vector, comprising (i) a nucleotide sequence encoding an immunoglobulin variable region, comprising a modular sequence of four consensus framework regions interspaced by three complementarity determining regions CDR1, CDR2, and CDR3, wherein said nucleotide sequence comprises DNA cleavage sites at the boundary of each consensus framework region and each complementarity determining region, and (ii) a plurality of vector modules, wherein each vector module is flanked by DNA cleavage sites, wherein each of said DNA cleavage sites of (i) and (ii) is unique within said vector, and wherein said immunoglobulin variable region is a heavy chain or a light chain.
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