Scouting Novel Therapeutic Molecule for IP Licensing

Regulatory filings: All upcoming requests &amp; approvals in various geographies where the client operates: Asia, Middle East &amp; Africa (AMEA) Europe Latin America North America
Regulatory trends: Product segment-wise Technology-wise Others

The Client

European Pharmaceutical giant.

Challenge

IP head of a European pharmaceutical company approached us with a challenging task, wherein IEBS was asked to perform worldwide patent scouting for novel small pharmaceutical molecules for breast cancer therapy, originated from universities for the licensing/research collaboration purpose.

Our Solution

Considering the broad scope of the search worldwide, we broke the project into three key steps –

For conducting patents/patent applications searches for novel small molecules for breast cancer assigned to universities, we prepared a list and search strategies around important receptors e.g. estrogen receptors, HER-2 etc. [Results pertaining to large molecules, for example antibody, mab etc. were filtered out].
Results retrieved from the step 1 were subjected to important consideration with respect to successful pre-clinical reports in patent documents, research papers or undergoing clinical trial by the same assignee/inventors.
Finally, a detailed report was presented to client for all active patent references which claim chemical molecule with good activity report, mentioned either in patent document itself or in a research paper/conference paper/clinical trial detail. A total of 85 potential small molecules were reported.

Our Impact

The report helped IP head to select one potential small molecule in co-ordination with his R&D head. This molecule (a selective estrogen receptor modulator) has proven well in preclinical stages and survived invalidity study. Company is now planning to sponsor clinical trial study for this molecule.