Appeal No. 1998-2648
Application No. 08/473,888
Claims 1-13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by, or
alternatively under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over, Toole.
We reverse all of the rejections.
Background
Appellants’ specification discloses oligonucleotides which hybridize to
double-stranded DNA and form triple-helix (“triplex”) structures. The specification
acknowledges that triplex-forming oligos were known in the prior art, but states
that they had the “serious practical limitation” of requiring
runs of purines in the center target strand of typically 10 or more
bases interrupted by only one or two pyrimidines (hereafter called
“purine-rich” sequences or targets). While runs of sufficient length
are present in many of the genes and the non-gene DNA (or RNA)
of eukaryotes and prokaryotes and their viruses, they are not
frequent enough for widespread diagnostic and therapeutic uses.
Page 3, lines 18-25.
The specification states that
a major object of the present invention is to provide synthetic
nucleic acid monomers (“residues”), that when incorporated into an
oligonucleotide (“third strand”), or analog oligomer, i.e., a third
strand with a synthetic backbone, enables the third strand to form a
triple-stranded nucleic acid (“triplex”) when hybridized to a double-
stranded nucleic acid (“duplex”), wherein the “target region” to
which the third strand binds is of substantially any base sequence;
that is, it need not include a run of a large number of adjacent
purines on one strand. In other words, the residues that are
provided will be capable of strong and specific binding to inverted
base pairs.
Page 6, lines 24-36 (emphasis in original). The specification and independent
claims 1-10 define the physical parameters of the “synthetic residues” that are
necessary to enable binding to non-purine-rich sequences.
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