BLG News Spring 2007

News from the Baylor Licensing Group
Volume 6, No. 2 Spring 2007

In this issue we discuss Wiki for Professionals and the impact this new forum might have on intellectual property rights. The concept of an open forum for sharing of scientific data is an attractive one, but it also presents new challenges in securing patent rights and protecting your research.

Topics in this issue:
Wiki for Professionals and Intellectual Property
A Popular Mouse Model
Licensing and Company News

Wiki for Professionals and Intellectual Property

Wiki for Professionals and Wiki Proteins, (demo at: http://www.wikiprofessional.info/) being developed under Wiki for Professionals to serve scientists, has the potential to be one of the most powerful, up-to-date repositories of scientific knowledge. It also has the potential to present additional challenges with respect to securing intellectual property rights.

Initially, Wiki Proteins will be a single resource for existing public information, where various databases such as Swiss-Prot and PubMed are interlinked. The next phase will allow users to edit entries by adding and modifying the existing text and links as new information becomes available. In addition, users will be able to create new pages to open a discussion forum for their work. Ultimately, text-mining capabilities will enable searches for links between proteins and diseases, thereby leveraging this large collection of information.

By providing a forum to corroborate, dispute or add to the current knowledge in a field, Wiki Proteins should attract a large number of contributors. This can compromise the ability to secure intellectual property rights. Postings to these forums, regardless of who posts it, will be considered prior art. Prior art is information that might describe or suggest the concept of an invention prior to the date a patent application is filed. Such prior art can damage or eliminate the possibility of getting meaningful claims in a patent.

Another concern is the potential loss of foreign patent rights. Publishing preliminary data to the web in an effort to contribute to the field is considered public disclosure of what might be key information on an invention that should be patented. In the United States, there is a 12-month grace period to file a patent after public disclosure. Most other countries have an absolute novelty rule, which maintains that no public disclosure is allowed prior to filing. Contact us at blg@bcm.edu to discuss whether something you want to post should be disclosed to us prior to that posting.

A Popular Mouse Model

In 1994 Dr. Norman Greenberg, formerly of BCM’s Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology and the Scott Department of Urology and now at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Dr. Jeffrey Rosen of BCM’s Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology, and Dr. Robert Matusik of the University of Manitoba developed a mouse model of prostate cancer, called TRAMP (Transgenic Mouse Model for Prostate Cancer). The mouse expresses the SV40 large T antigen under a prostate specific probasin promoter. TRAMP has been a licensing success for BCM. Once it attracted attention in 1996, inquiries started coming in from industry scientists. To date, 15 research use licenses have been executed with companies for TRAMP, making it our most frequently licensed mouse model.

In addition, three cell lines were derived from a primary prostate tumor from TRAMP called TRAMP-C1, TRAMP-C2 and TRAMP-C3. These cell lines have been licensed out individually or as a group in 14 different research use licenses to companies.

The TRAMP mouse model is available from Jackson Labs, and the TRAMP cell lines are available from ATCC. We have agreements with each of these distributors which stipulate that for-profit entities must have a license from BCM prior to ordering them.

While not all animal models and cell lines will be licensed as frequently as TRAMP, we welcome disclosures for animal models and cell lines as soon as they have been developed and characterized. This allows us to have all the necessary information in place when those licensees start calling.

Licensing and Company News

BLG negotiates a number of license agreements each year with commercial partners. See our FY 2006 statistics. Recent examples of the fruits of BLG’s efforts to commercialize Baylor technology include:

Baylor has executed an agreement with Advantagene Inc., granting them an exclusive license to the worldwide rights to intellectual property related to a novel cancer immunotherapy. The technology concerns methods of treating cancer by transferring genes to the tumor cells that make them highly sensitive to approved anti-herpes drugs. These drugs are then used to kill the tumor cells. It was initially developed by, Drs. Savio Woo and Shu-Hsia Chen in the 1990’s, with continued development by Dr. Estuardo Aguilar-Cordova while at Baylor. Advantagene is now in clinical development with this project for multiple indications. Please see the press release on our web site.

Baylor has executed a license agreement with ImmunoVac, Inc., for the exclusive, worldwide rights to novel immunotherapy technologies developed in the laboratory of Dr. Si-Yi Chen, an investigator in the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy. The licensed technologies represent an approach to immunotherapy involving the suppression of negative immune regulators to treat cancer or infectious disease. A press release is available on our web site.

LigoCyte Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced on April 3, 2007, that it has initiated the Phase I clinical trial of its investigational norovirus. The study will assess safety and immunogenicity of LigoCyte's intranasally-delivered, dry powder vaccine in healthy adults. LigoCyte's norovirus vaccine is a needle-free, dry powder formulation based upon virus like particles (VLPs). BLG executed an exclusive license with LigoCyte in 2004 for the rights to intellectual property and technology related to the use of norovirus VLPs as a vaccine. The licensed intellectual property and technology was developed in the laboratory of Dr. Mary Estes in the Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology. Read the press release on our web site.

BCM and VGX Pharmaceuticals Inc., (VGX) have executed a license agreement providing VGX a broad range of Growth Hormone Releasing Hormone (“GHRH”) and related intellectual property for application in humans. VGX intends to develop the technology for a number of indications including cachexia in cancer and HIV patients as well as age-related disorders. The underlying technology was developed in the laboratories of Dr. Robert Schwartz, Dr. Ruxandra Draghia-Akli, and other collaborators during their time at Baylor’s Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology. Please see the press release on our web site.

BLG Contact Information

For any questions related to inventions, patents and licenses, please contact BLG.

Baylor Licensing Group
One Baylor Plaza
BCMD-600D, MSC BCM210
Houston, TX 77030

Phone:       713-798-6821
E-Mail:       blg@bcm.edu
Web site:    http://www.bcm.edu/blg/