Appeal No. 2006-3250 Page 4
Application No. 10/468,562
D-pantothenate yield or the requirement for the addition of β-alanine.1
Specification, pages 1-3. Therefore, Appellants disclose (specification, page 3),
“[i]t is an object of the present invention to provide an . . . improved process for
preparing D-pantothenic acid and/or salts thereof which does not have the
abovementioned disadvantages. For economical reasons, a process is desirable
here in which supplying β-alanine is greatly decreased or is not required at all.”
Accordingly, Appellants’ claim 12 is direct to a process for preparing
D-pantothenic acid and/or salts thereof. The process set forth in claim 1
comprises four required steps.3 The first step requires that at least one
bacterium fermented to form at least 2 g/l of salts of D-pantothenic acid in a
culture medium to which no free β-alanine and/or β-alanine salt is added. This
step places three requirements on the bacterium: (1) the bacterium must be from
the Bacillaceae family; (2) the bacterium must produce D-pantothenic acid; and
(3) the bacterium is modified so that the biosynthesis of pantothenic acid (pan)
and/or isoleucine/valine (ilv) is deregulated. According to Appellants’
specification (page 7), “[t]he word ‘deregulation’, for the purposes of the present
invention, means changing or modifying at least one gene which codes for one
enzyme in a biosynthetic metabolic pathway, so that the activity of the enzyme is
1 While appellants’ specification does not discuss Hikichi or Binder, both of these patents disclose
the fermentation of a microorganism to produce D-pantothenate. We note, however, that both of
these patents require the addition of β–alanine. See Hikichi, column 2, lines 20-24; Binder,
column 8, lines 32-34.
2 All of the remaining claims before us on appeal depend from claim 1.
3 The process of claim 1 may also comprise an optional step. Specifically, “optionally adding
calcium base and/or magnesium base to set the free D-pantothenic acid-containing eluate to a
pH of 3-10, a solution being obtained which contains calcium and/or magnesium pantothenate.”
Since this step is not a required step in Appellants’ claimed process we will not discuss it further.
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