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What's in a Patent?

Jun 04, 2009

The Supreme Court says that it'll look into Bilski v. Doll, says Science Insider. Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw's patent application for a business model was rejected -- the model was for "hedging bets in the commodities market" -- because the invention wasn't concrete enough. Hans Sauer, a patent counsel for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, says that though the decision isn't directly tied to biotech, it may still have an effect if the Supreme Court tightens the definition of what is patentable.

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Germline-Targeting HIV Vaccine Shows Promise in Phase I Trial

A National Institutes of Health-led team reports in Science that a broadly neutralizing antibody HIV vaccine induced bnAb precursors in 97 percent of those given the vaccine.

Study Uncovers Genetic Mutation in Childhood Glaucoma

A study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation ties a heterozygous missense variant in thrombospondin 1 to childhood glaucoma.

Gene Co-Expression Database for Humans, Model Organisms Gets Update

GeneFriends has been updated to include gene and transcript co-expression networks based on RNA-seq data from 46,475 human and 34,322 mouse samples, a new paper in Nucleic Acids Research says.

New Study Investigates Genomics of Fanconi Anemia Repair Pathway in Cancer

A Rockefeller University team reports in Nature that FA repair deficiency leads to structural variants that can contribute to genomic instability.