Appeal 2007-2955
Application 10/190,425
to determine whether there was an apparent reason to combine the known
elements in the fashion claimed” (id. at 1740-41, 82 USPQ2d at 1396).
We find that the Examiner has established that the combined
teachings of the cited references, all of which pertain to profiling cells or
cellular proteins using patterned microarrays (FF 10, 11, 20, 26, and 30),
would have provided a reason for one of ordinary skill in the art to profile
living cells, rather than cell lysates, or dead, fixed cells, on a hydrated gel
coated microarray.
First, while Wagner uses the probes on his hydrated gel coated
microarrays to capture and immobilize proteins from cell lysates (FF 20),
one of skill in the art would have recognized from the teachings of Taylor,
Chang, and Belov that the same kinds of probes, e.g., antibodies, arranged in
the same kinds of patterns, could also be used to capture and immobilize
whole cells for subsequent profiling (FF 14, 16, 17, 22, 27, and 30).
Second, Appellants have not explained why one skilled in the art
would not have had good reason to profile living cells on a microarray - any
microarray - given Taylor’s discussion of the advantages to be gained by
analyzing the responses of live cells as opposed to fixed, dead cells (FF 7
and 8). As discussed above, Taylor teaches that analyzing living cells
provides valuable information which cannot be obtained from fixed cells,
such as “temporal information about changes in [the] physiological,
biochemical and molecular activities” of cells (Taylor, col. 2, ll. 16-20; and
FF 9).
Finally, Appellants’ argument that Wagner and Taylor “cannot be
operatively combined” (Appeal Br. 12), i.e., physically combined, is
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