Patent for CRISPR in Europe

The European Patent Office announced its support for the authors of the CRISPR genomic editing method

Marina Astvatsaturyan, Echo of Moscow

The European Patent Office announced its intention to grant a patent with a wide scope of protection, or a broad patent, for the use of the popular genome editor – the CRISPR system – to the University of California (C) on March 23, The Scientist reported the next day (UC Berkeley Receives CRISPR Patent in Europe).

In mid-February, the US Patent and Trademark Office identified the Broad Institute at Harvard University and MIT as the owner of intellectual rights to a promising method of genomic editing.

In 2012, California scientists were the first to describe the principle of using elements of the bacterial immune system – clusters of palindromic repeats of the CRISPR DNA sequence together with the Cas9 enzyme – for precise genome editing.

However, the Broad Institute won the first stage of the patent competition, indicating in its application the possibility of applying the method to human cells, which has the prospect of multibillion-dollar profits in the medical market. He also made some efforts to ensure that his application was considered by the American Patent Office as quickly as possible, and regarding the application of the University of California, which was considered in the prescribed manner and even longer, the same office concluded that the effectiveness of the proposed method in the case of human and other eukaryotic cells is not obvious.

This gave a clear patent advantage to Broad. But even then, analysts noted that there would also be a continuation of the story.

As it turned out now, European patent scientists are inclined to accept the arguments of the California group, claiming that the method developed on the basis of their discovery implies the possibility of using the CRISPR system not only in bacteria and in general in prokaryotes, that is, in nuclear-free unicellular organisms, but also in multicellular, eukaryotic organisms, including humans.

However, the expert of the publication Sciencemag.org Robert Cook-Deegan from the University of Arizona (Arizona State University) believes that the Broad Institute will not give up so easily and will challenge the decision of the European Patent Office. "We are dealing with a moving target, and as events unfold, the influence of stakeholders will change," he notes. It is too early to talk about any consequences of the declaration of intent of the European Patent Office to support Californians, companies pay for licensing a patent for CRISPR to both competing parties.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  05.04.2017