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Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A) intends to appeal the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) decision invalidating two patents in a CRISPR dispute with Synthego.
Agilent said on Thursday that the PTAB reversed the USPTO’s original decision granting claims directed towards chemically modified synthetic CRISPR guide RNA.
On Wednesday, Synthego disclosed that PTAB ruled in favor of its petitions seeking to invalidate Agilent’s US Patents Nos. 10,337,001 and 10,900,034 in the Inter Partes Review before the PTAB.
Synthego noted that the PTAB’s decision invalidates all claims of the Agilent patents, which were directed to guide RNAs having at least one 2’-O-methyl modification (10,900,034 patent) and guide RNAs having certain modifications within 5 nucleotides of their 5’ and/or 3’ end (10,337,001 patent), plus methods of using such modified guide RNAs for CRISPR gene editing.
“The ruling confirms that the invalidated Agilent patents attempted to claim well-known modifications to guide RNAs already taught by prior art, said Synthego CEO in the May 17 press release.
Agilent said it disagrees with the PTAB’s decision of unpatentability in view of prior art previously considered by the USPTO during its primary examination.
Agilent noted that its patents describe synthesis and testing of hundreds of chemically modified CRISPR guide RNA molecules which were shown to improve the efficiency of CRISPR-based gene editing.
Before the work done by Agilent’s inventors, it was not known if the many chemical modifications the company made to various and long guide RNAs would disrupt functionality of the gRNA:Cas enzyme complex, according to Agilent.
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