Benitec Biopharma said this week that the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted a patent from the company’s core Graham intellectual property portfolio.
Additionally, the company said it has received a South Korean patent related to its lead hepatitis C drug candidate TT-034, while a collaborator on its non-small cell lung cancer program has been issued a patent related to the use of RNAi to sensitize treatment-resistant lung cancer cells.
The US patent application, No. 20120135517, is entitled “Methods and Means for Obtaining Modified Phenotypes,” and claims DNA constructs targeting multiple genes with a broader range of length limitations on the sequence than in earlier patents, Benitec said. The constructs can also be used in a range of cells, including potentially stem cells.
The South Korean patent, which is owned by Benitec, is entitled “Multiple Promoter Expression Cassettes for Simultaneous Delivery of RNAi Agents,” the company noted.
The Chinese patent was issued to the University of New South Wales, and is entitled “Methods for Detecting and Modulating the Sensitivity of Tumor Cells to Anti-Mitotic Agents.”