3 ms·

> however endogenously produced drugs cannot be patented and therefore are not lucrative You are mistaken. They can and have been in the EU. I would like to m

> however endogenously produced drugs cannot be patented and therefore are not lucrative You are mistaken. They can and have been in the EU. I would like to make you and the Hackernews crowed aware of Rule 27 of the The European Patent Convention. "Biotechnological inventions shall also be patentable if they concern: (a) biological material which is isolated from its natural environment or produced by means of a technical process even if it previously occurred in nature" Which is clarified in "The European Patent Office's Guidelines for Examination" as: "to find a previously unrecognised substance occurring in nature is... mere discovery and therefore unpatentable. However, if a substance found in nature can be shown to produce a technical effect, it may be patentable. An example of such a case is that of a substance occurring in nature which is found to have an antibiotic effect." The EU goes even further: You can patent a previously described natural compound for medical uses under Art. 54(4) and Art. 54(5 EPC, assuming that the compund was previously not known to be usable for a particular use case. I suggest you read https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-022-01269-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-022-01269-3 as well as https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/html/epc/2020/e/r27.html https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/html/epc/2020/e.... Then draft a pitch deck and go VC hunting. The EU market is ca.400 million people, that should be enough.

SemanticStrengh 4y ago
Thanks for sharing, I wasn't aware of that, that is a big news to me. However I'm afraid this is very limited: 1) many peptides are produced by extracting them from cattle organs, here their thymus but see also cerebrolysin for example. The Peptides researchers have often made synthetic analogues, which are similar to the endogenously produced version but can be produced in labs. However not every peptide has a synthetic variant and IIRC thymalin is derived from cattles thymuses. Also what does produced by means of a technical process even means. Extraction from organs IS a technical process made of many reagents and steps. A synthetic production of a chemical in a lab via enzymes is a mostly biological process in my book, please clarify EU. 2) > assuming that the compund was previously not known to be usable for a particular use case Now that destroy most applications and its ridiculous. What happen about a substance is that at first their is base public access research. This base research find most uses, here that thymalin increase lymphocite T production. The goal of the base research is to enable future clinical trials years later. However since this base research has found the use, it's no longer patentable and therefore ironically prevent clinical trials. Now if applying an immunostimulant for X new immunosuppressive diseases is a separate patent despite deriving from the same basic public research property is valid.. is an open and ad-hoc question? However to be perfectly honest, while my general statement about Peptides is true, there exists (unrelated to HIV) patents about thymalin I don't know how that is possible.
dekhn 4y ago
I'm going to have to spend at least 10 minutes today contemplating the implications of "to find a previously unrecognised substance occurring in nature is... mere discovery and therefore unpatentable. However, if a substance found in nature can be shown to produce a technical effect, it may be patentable. An example of such a case is that of a substance occurring in nature which is found to have an antibiotic effect." that's an important subtlety (specifically, allowing patenting if a substance can be shown to have a "use"). Maybe nature should hire a lawyer and do some preemptive patenting.
- niemandhier 4y ago
  Use and process have to be disclosed as part of the patent, so preemptive actions are hard.

SemanticStrengh 4y ago

Thanks for sharing, I wasn't aware of that, that is a big news to me. However I'm afraid this is very limited: 1) many peptides are produced by extracting them from cattle organs, here their thymus but see also cerebrolysin for example. The Peptides researchers have often made synthetic analogues, which are similar to the endogenously produced version but can be produced in labs. However not every peptide has a synthetic variant and IIRC thymalin is derived from cattles thymuses. Also what does produced by means of a technical process even means. Extraction from organs IS a technical process made of many reagents and steps. A synthetic production of a chemical in a lab via enzymes is a mostly biological process in my book, please clarify EU. 2) > assuming that the compund was previously not known to be usable for a particular use case Now that destroy most applications and its ridiculous. What happen about a substance is that at first their is base public access research. This base research find most uses, here that thymalin increase lymphocite T production. The goal of the base research is to enable future clinical trials years later. However since this base research has found the use, it's no longer patentable and therefore ironically prevent clinical trials. Now if applying an immunostimulant for X new immunosuppressive diseases is a separate patent despite deriving from the same basic public research property is valid.. is an open and ad-hoc question? However to be perfectly honest, while my general statement about Peptides is true, there exists (unrelated to HIV) patents about thymalin I don't know how that is possible.

dekhn 4y ago

I'm going to have to spend at least 10 minutes today contemplating the implications of "to find a previously unrecognised substance occurring in nature is... mere discovery and therefore unpatentable. However, if a substance found in nature can be shown to produce a technical effect, it may be patentable. An example of such a case is that of a substance occurring in nature which is found to have an antibiotic effect." that's an important subtlety (specifically, allowing patenting if a substance can be shown to have a "use"). Maybe nature should hire a lawyer and do some preemptive patenting.

niemandhier 4y ago
Use and process have to be disclosed as part of the patent, so preemptive actions are hard.