Appeal No. 2005-0392
Application No. 09/171,885
the drug and the receptor, which in the case of the Morgan patent would be the
antibody, we find that Morgan does not teach each and every limitation set forth in the
claims.
Accordingly, Rejection I is reversed.
Rejection II.
The examiner argues that claims 36, 39 and 40 would have been obvious to one
of ordinary skill in the art given the teachings of Morgan that the carriers disclosed
therein “have multiple drug-binding regions capable of binding multiple drug molecules.”
Answer, p. 5. The examiner contends that it would have been obvious to said persons
to design the conjugates of ‘951 [Morgan] wherein the domains would be
different [and?] would be capable of binding more than one drug where the drugs
are different with the expectation that administering more than one drug to treat a
condition would result in an additive treatment effect with the motivation of
protecting the drug against metabolism or other factors that might reduce
potency. Id.
Given that the examiner’s obviousness rejection rests on the same premise as
Rejection I, i.e., that the antibody/csDBM complex is a “synthetic receptor” within the
scope of the claims, it reasonably follows that this rejection fails for the reason set forth
above.
drug is non-covalently bound to the antibody, antibody fragment or carrier in a manner
such that it can be administered to an organism, we do not find that it anticipates the
method described in representative claim 34. Rather, as disclosed by Morgan (col. 5,
lines 11-17), its
. . . invention provides for a csDBM that is specifically designed to fit the drug
molecule and undergo multiple non-covalent interactions with a drug to enhance
its binding affinity to antibody or carrier and to provide a conjugate stable enough
to arrive at target sites with most of the drug still bound.
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