Appeal No. 2001-2168
Application No. 09/083,307
response against transformed, infected or diseased tissue.
Appellant’s invention is useful in the treatment of cancer.
According to appellant’s invention, the patient’s
blood is pumped through a filter having a cutoff of 120,000
daltons1 to remove those blood components having molecular
weights equal to or less than the filter cutoff and
comprised of immunosuppressive components. The removal of
the immunosuppressive components by the filter is said to
improve the patient’s immune response to the disease or
infection being treated.
A copy of the appealed claims is appended to
appellant’s brief.
The following references are relied upon by the
examiner as evidence of obviousness in support of the
rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103:
Lentz 4,708,713 Nov. 24, 1987
Okarma et al. 5,523,096 Jun. 04, 1996
(Okarma)
Wolpe 5,861,483 Jan. 19, 1999
1 The manner in which the filter is disclosed and claimed in
appellant’s application presupposes a predetermined
relationship between the size of the components in the
blood and the molecular weight of those components (e.g.,
the smaller the size, the smaller the molecular weight). We
understood that it is customary in the art to define the
size of membrane filters or ultra filters, as they are also
called, in terms of the molecular weight of the blood
components passed by the filter.
2
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