Appeal No. 2004-2134 Page 3
Application No. 09/425,075
Claims 36-39 and 42-501 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being rendered obvious by the combination of Horwitz, Cregg, the Invitrogen
Catalog and Robinson. In addition, claims 36-39 and 41-502 stand rejected
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious over the previous combination of
references as further combined with Vanderlaan. After careful review of the
record and consideration of the issues before us, we affirm both rejections.
BACKGROUND
The invention pertains to the production of functionally assembled antigen-
specific intact monoclonal antibodies produced by the transformation of the
methylotropic yeast, Pichia pastoris, with immunoglobulin genes. See
Specification, page 1. According to the specification,
[t]he method of the invention for production of functionally
assembled antigen-specific intact monoclonal antibody, using
transformation of P. pastoris, has a general utility and essentially
any antibody can be produced or secreted by P. pastoris as long as
the yeast expression vector carrying antibody genes can be
appropriately assembled.
Id. at 6.
More specifically,
a recombinant yeast expression vector (pPICZα) with dual
expression cassettes is constructed, each cassette carrying the
inducible alcohol oxidase (AOX1) promoter, fused to the
Saccharomyces cerevisiae α-factor signal sequence. P. pastoris is
1 The Examiner’s Answer states that claims 36-40 and 42-49 stand rejected. See Examiner’s
Answer, page 3. The Appeal Brief, however, states that claims 36-39 and 42-50 stand rejected.
See Appeal Brief, page 5. As claim 40 is not pending, the examiner’s statement appears to be a
typographical error, and we thus decide the appeal as it pertains to claim 36-39 and 42-50.
2 Again, the Examiner’s Answer states that the rejection is applied to claims 36-49, see
Examiner’s Answer, page 11, while the Appeal Brief states that it apples to claims 36-39 and 41-
50. For the reasons set forth in the previous footnote, we are again treating the examiner’s
statement as a typographical error.
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