Appeal No. 97-1999
Application 07/390,745
provides substantial evidence in support of claims drawn to
methods of treating neuropsychopharmacological disorders with
pharmaceutical compositions comprising ACPC and its esters.
However, it appears to this panel that Claims 1-4 are not
commensurate in scope with the scope of support in the
specification. Claims 1-4 are directed to methods of treating
neuropsychopharmacological disorders comprising administering
to a patient in need of treatment thereof “a compound
possessing partial agonist properties for the strychnine
insensitive glycine modulatory site of the N-methyl-D-
aspartate receptor complex in an amount effective to alleviate
the symptoms of the neuropsychopharmacological disorder”
(Claim 1). Even with knowledge of their NMDA receptor-
regulating activity, Nadler makes it clear that amino acids of
similar structure have contrasting activities and ACPC
activity might invite persons skilled in the art to “attempt
to design new derivatives of greater therapeutic potency”
(Nadler, p. 116, col. 2, last sentence). It is not clear to
us how the limited number and kind of examples in this
specification, i.e., ACPC and its esters, which in effect are
one example, support broad claims to methods for treating
neuropsychopharmacological disorders generally with any
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