University of Southern California of Los Angeles has received US Patent No. 8,357,369, "Genetic markers for predicting responsiveness to combination therapy." Methods are claimed for determining the likelihood of successful treatment with an effective amount of an anti-VEGF antibody or its equivalent, in combination with anti-EGFR antibody or its equivalent, and, in some aspects in combination with a topoisomerase inhibitor. They include using arrays to determine the identity of a gene of interest in a patient sample and correlating the patient's genotype with the predictive response. Patients identified as responsive are then treated with the appropriate therapy.
Bunge Oils of St. Louis has received US Patent No. 8,357,503, "Hydrolases, nucleic acids encoding them and methods for making and using them." The patent claims hydrolases, including lipases, saturases, palmitases and, stearatases, polynucleotides encoding them, and methods of making and using these polynucleotides and polypeptides. According to the patent, the nucleic acids or polypeptides provided can be immobilized to or applied to an array that, in turn, can be used to screen for or monitor libraries of compositions for their ability to bind to or modulate the activity of the nucleic acids or polypeptides as provided. In one aspect, the hydrolases are used as immobilized forms.
Enzo Life Sciences of Farmingdale, NY, has received US Patent No. 8,357,793, "Label target and labeling reagents comprising backbones with at least two consecutive peptide bonds." The patent claims labeling reagents, labeled targets, and processes for preparing labeling reagents. The labeling reagents claimed can take the form of cyanine dyes, xanthene dyes, porphyrin dyes, coumarin dyes or composite dyes, and are useful for labeling probes or targets, including nucleic acids and proteins. The reagents can be usefully applied to protein and nucleic acid probe-based assays and are also applicable to real-time detection processes, the patent claims.
Enzo Life Sciences has also received US Patent No. 8,357,801, "Labeling of target molecules, identification of organelles and other applications, novel compositions, methods and kits." This patent provides dyes, reactive dyes, and labeled reagents that may be used in the detection or quantification of desirable target molecules, such as proteins, nucleic acids and cellular organelles. The provided dyes may be used free in solution where the binding of the dye to the target molecule provides signal generation, according to the patent. Dyes are also provided that consist of reactive groups that may be used to attach the dyes to probes that will bind to desirable target molecules.