Benitec said this week that it has received a notice that the European Patent Office will issue a patent on a company application covering the use of an RNA construct to inhibit hepatitis C virus levels in cells, tissues, and organs.
The application, No. 2005727680, is entitled, "Multiple Promoter-Expression Cassettes for Simultaneous Delivery of RNAi Agents." The rights to the intellectual property were previously licensed to Tacere Therapeutics (GSN 10/12/2006), which is developing an shRNA-based HCV therapy with Pfizer.