3 stem cell patents issued last week

Dear manoj kumar valluru,

Last week 3 patents of relevance to the area of stem cells were issued.

1. # 7,320,872 (Patent Spotlight), covers a neural stem cell derived from the ventricles of the of brain.

2. # 7,321,075 covers serial transfer of nuclei during cloning of animals. Instead of the animals reproducing normally then can be continually cloned.

3. # 7,321,076 teaches a method of cloning.

In The News

Velcade guides stem cells to bone

Sunday January 27th, 2008 @ 13:23:10 EST

Boston, Massachusetts -

Stem cell therapeutics are difficult to commercialize because of the need for cellular manipulation. Even business models that involve off the shelf universal stem cells have the issue that you need are selling an actual biologic product, a product that is very difficult to standardize and ensure quality control

A much more attractive method of commercializing stem cell therapeutics involves the use of small molecule drugs that can activate endogenous stem cells. This approach is ideal since the infrastructure and regulatory pathways for small molecule drugs are much more defined than for biologics. The interest in small molecule drugs that modify stem cell activity can be seen by the recent founding of the company Fate Therapeutics, even though the company did not even have candidates when they raised money.

Even more attractive than developing small molecule agents that target stem cells is the ability of finding drugs already in clinical use that can target stem cell activities. This way you don't need to do any development, with exception of some proof of concept efficacy studies. This is exactly what was done in a recent paper from Harvard Mukherjee et al. Pharmacologic targeting of a stem/progenitor population in vivo is associated with enhanced bone regeneration in mice. J Clin Invest. 2008 Jan 24

The investigators used the clinically approved drug velcade (also called bortezomib or PS-341, made by Millenium Pharmaceuticals) an inhibitor of NF-kB, which acts by inhibiting proteosomes, to induce mesenchymal stem cell differentiation into bone cells.

Specifically, they demonstrated that treatment with velcade targets the Runx-2 DNA-binding protein which is involved in osteogenesis.

The researchers demonstrated that administration of mesenchymal stem cells to mice recieving velcade results in the mice developing ectopic bone (note to self, if your on velacade don't take MSCs !!).

More physiologically relevant, velcade was able to ameliorate pathology in a murine model of osteoporosis.

This is surely to be one of many to come in terms of using already approved pharmaceuticals to modify stem cells. Other examples of this include the use of valproic acid to activate endogenous stem cells, as well as the administration of the pregnancy associated compound human chorionic gonadotropin to stimulate hematopoiesis, or erythropoietin to stimulate neurogenesis.

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This Week's Patent Spotlight

Ependymal neural stem cells and method for their isolation

Patent Number: 7,320,872

Assignee | Inventor

Glia are the non-neuronal cells of the central nervous system. There are several types of glia. For example, microglia are generally hematopoietically derived cells similar to macrophages that are capable of phagocytosis and clearing local debris. Astrocytes are responsible for physically connecting the neurons to the vasculature feeding them. Astrocytes also regulate the ionic environment, as well as the flow of blood from the adjacent blood vessels. Oligodendrocytes coat the axons with myelin, similarly how the Schwann cell myelinates the peripheral CNS. Radial cells are involved in regulating synaptic plasticity. Ependymal cells are responsible for production of the cerebrospinal fluid. They are usually found on the walls of the ventricles of the brain.

The current invention deals with the ependymal cells. Specifically, the inventors have found that ependymal neural stem cells may be isolated by specific surface and intracellular markers.

The patent covers, amongst other things, “an isolated ependymal neural CNS stem cell" with the markers Notch 1 and/or Notch 2, Notch 3, CAR, and CFTR. The claims also cover "a cell preparation" and "a method of isolation".

The specification teaches that these cells are useful as bona fide "neural stem cells” in that they can generate neurospheres and be useful for treatment of spinal cord injury and other conditions where new neurons are needed.

There are two other patents issued belonging to this family and assigned to NeuroNova, 6541247 which covers isolation and 7279332 which includes drug discovery uses of the cells.

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