Brian W. Nolan

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Companies have been exploring the potential to use combinations of various checkpoint inhibitors to enhance the treatment of patients with various cancers. The recent approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdualag™ for the treatment of patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma shows that such combinations offer new avenues for patients suffering from cancer. Opdualag™, a fixed-dose combination of the antibodies nivolumab (a programmed death-1 inhibitor) and relatlimab (a lymphocyte activation gene-3 inhibitor) formulated as a single intravenous injection, showed improved results compared to nivolumab monotherapy.

These results are good news from a clinical perspective. They also provide good news from a patent protection perspective because
Continue Reading Antibody Combinations in Immunotherapy Offer New Opportunities for Innovators to Strengthen IP Protections

The CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system has revolutionized genetic engineering. Over the last decade, this technology has exploded at a breathtaking pace due to its simplicity, scalability, affordability and adaptability. Currently, the CRISPR-Cas9 system is employed in molecular biology laboratories all around the world and has been used to edit the genomes of a myriad of organisms from bacteria to yeasts to plants to mammals. This is particularly true in the cancer immunotherapy sphere, where the CRISPR-Cas9 system has been successfully used to genetically enhance different cancer-killing properties of human immune cells. Pickar-Oliver and Gersbach, 2019, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 20(8), 490-507.

Considering the potential application of the CRISPR-Cas9 system in the immunotherapy space, it is helpful to stay abreast of developments concerning the patenting of this technology. While there are a plethora of patents and patent applications relating to CRISPR,
Continue Reading Talk in the Biotech Industry has Focused on the Broad Institute’s Big Win—But Will Continued Scientific Development Minimize Its Impact?

Immunotherapy treatments such as antibodies targeting cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4), programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and PD-1 ligand1 (PD-L1) have shown promise in reactivating weakened immune cells to fight cancer. While these immunotherapies have had a dramatic impact in some cancer patients, the positive results only appear in a fraction of cases. The cost of treatment and potential for immune-related adverse events make it imperative that doctors have protocols to identify patient populations with an increased likelihood of successful outcomes with immunotherapy. This has led to a search for predictive biomarkers that may allow identification of such patients. Some have turned to artificial intelligence (AI) to scour data to identify common biomarkers or other covariates in patients successfully treated with immunotherapy.

AI has the capability of reviewing a staggering amount of patient data to identify recurring patterns of shared predictive factors that would elude unaided human capacity.
Continue Reading Patent Considerations for Optimizing Immunotherapies with the Help of Artificial Intelligence