Appeal No. 97-1999
Application 07/390,745
disclosure, but the disclosure itself does not contain a
sufficient teaching of how to obtain the desired result,
or that the claimed result would be obtained if certain
directions were pursued.
We find from Nadler’s teaching that compounds which are
glycine agonists or antagonists or compounds which mimic the
effects of glycine on the NMDA receptor in vitro, “might
therefore serve as effective pharmacotherapeutic agents in
abnormal NMDA-receptor functioning, through altering the
efficacy of glutamate at its own sites” (Nadler, p. 115, col.
1, para. 1). Nadler’s results “indicate that ACC, like
glycine, does not act at the glutamate binding site” (Nadler,
p. 116, col. 1). Nadler “found that ACC . . . mimics the
effects of glycine in that it potentiates the NMDA . . .
evoked currents in a concentration-dependent manner” (Nadler,
p. 116, col. 1). However, Nadler’s analysis of his own
results reasonably would not have suggested to persons having
ordinary skill in the art that ACC or its esters could be
effectively used to treat neuropsycho-pharmacological
disorders. To the contrary, Nadler states (Nadler, p. 116,
col. 2):
The contrasting activities of these two amino acids[,
ACC and cycloleucine,] may enable them to serve as models
for current studies being carried out in our laboratory
in an attempt to design new derivatives of greater
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