Today, VistaGen Therapeutics announced that it has received broader intellectual property protection for its stem cell technology platform. The United States Patent and Trademark Office recently issued a notice of allowance (NOA) for U.S. Patent Application 12/836,275, entitled “Cell populations enriched for endoderm cells.” The NOA extends VistaGen Therapeutics’ intellectual property portfolio for pluripotent stem cell culture systems that produce human cells of the endoderm lineage, including liver, lung, pancreas, parathyroid, and thyroid cells.
When issued, this patent will be complementary to U.S. Patent Nos. 7,763,466, 8,512,957 and 8,143,009, both of which are exclusively licensed by VistaGen Therapeutics from the Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
“This patent allowance is another critical step in extending intellectual property protection for our stem cell technology platform. LiverSafe 3D™, one of our core assay systems for drug rescue, in particular stands to benefit greatly from this broader intellectual property protection,” stated Shawn K. Singh, VistaGen’s Chief Executive Officer.
“In addition to expanding the scope of our drug rescue opportunities, this patent allowance and our world-class differentiation expertise put VistaGen in a unique position to pursue potential stem cell research collaborations related to liver biology and drug metabolism assays, as well as pancreatic beta-islet cells for drug and regenerative cell therapy for diabetes,” said Ralph Snodgrass, Ph.D., VistaGen’s President and Chief Scientific Officer.
VistaGen Therapeutics’ reception of the NOA builds on other recent developments that could be promising for the company. VistaGen Therapeutics recently joined the Cardiac Research Safety Consortium, a driving force in public-private research that evaluates the cardiac safety of medical products. The Cardiac Research Safety Consortium draws upon expertise from key stakeholders in the industrial, academic, and governmental sectors for data sharing and expertise. It was launched as a public-private partnership in 2006 through an FDA Critical Path Initiative Memorandum of Understanding with Duke University. With this new membership, VistaGen Therapeutics can benefit from new, key partnerships in the future.
The company’s LiverSafe 3D™ technology is a human liver cell-based biological assay system capable of predicting liver toxicity and metabolism issues in drug candidates that have been stop-gapped for development due to any unexpected liver problems arising during development. This technology is complemented by VistaGen Therapeutics’ other technology, CardioSafe 3D™, another biological assay that is useful in predicting in vivo cardiac effects, both toxic and nontoxic, of promising new drug candidates long before they are tested in humans.
More information about VistaGen Therapeutics, its developments, and its potentially revolutionary innovations for the biotechnological space can be found at www.vistagen.com.
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