Eligo Bioscience Announces Successful Outcome in US Patent Interference against SNIPR Biome on CRISPR-Cas antimicrobials

December 2, 2021

Paris, France, Dec 2, 2021: Eligo Bioscience today announced that the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued on Nov 19, 2021, a decision and a judgement acknowledging priority to the invention of precision bacterial killing using CRISPR to The Rockefeller University. This invention, described in patent family WO2014124226, is owned by The Rockefeller University and exclusively licensed to Eligo Bioscience. With the ruling, the USPTO canceled all claims of all five SNIPR Biome’s US patents involved in the interference.

In 2012, Professor Luciano Marraffini, currently head of the laboratory of bacteriology at The Rockefeller University, and Dr. David Bikard, then a postdoctoral scholar at The Rockefeller University, demonstrated that CRISPR could be used to kill bacteria with unprecedented precision, based on genetic determinants. The Rockefeller University filed a patent application directed to this invention.

In 2020, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was asked to declare an interference between the claims of #15/159,929 patent application (one member of patent family WO2014124226) covering a method for killing targeted bacteria in a mixed bacterial population and the claims of five SNIPR Biome patents. With the ruling issued on November 19, 2021, the USPTO canceled all claims of the five SNIPR Biome US patents involved in the interference, i.e., #10,582,712 – #10,506,812 – #10,463,049 – #10,524,477 – #US10,561,148.

“We were confident the USPTO would recognize the pioneering work of Professor Luciano Marraffini and Doctor David Bikard. Eligo Bioscience has been created to explore the full potential of the technology invented at The Rockefeller University and to enable the surgical removal of deleterious genes from the microbiome. Eligo Bioscience now owns a robust portfolio of 25+ patent families covering its diversified proprietary platforms and pipeline. This impactful decision issued by the USPTO confirms Eligo’s strong position as a leader in the microbiome gene editing field and will definitely bolster the development of our CRISPR programs, including our lead program which is entering clinical trials in 2022.”

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About Eligo Bioscience

Eligo Bioscience is the world leader in microbiome gene editing therapy and is advancing a highly differentiated pipeline of precision medicines to address unmet medical needs in inflammation, autoimmunity and oncology caused by the expression of specific deleterious bacterial genes by our microbiome. Eligo’s lead program, EB003, is aimed at the targeted eradication of a gut pathogen for a significant unmet medical need. First in human studies are planned in 2022.

Eligo was founded by scientists from The Rockefeller University, where CRISPR-based antimicrobials were invented, and by scientists from MIT. Eligo was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum in 2017. With venture capital funding from Khosla Ventures and Seventure Partners, and non-dilutive funding from GlaxoSmithKline, the European Commission, CARB-X, and Bpifrance, Eligo has built an extensive pipeline of drug candidates using its Eligobiotics® platform.

About Eligobiotics®

Eligo Bioscience is developing a new modality (Eligobiotics) to precisely edit deleterious bacterial genes from disease-driving microbiota. Eligobiotics deliver a therapeutic DNA payload in the microbiome of patients in-situ, which can be programmed to express a CRISPR nuclease to efficiently remove a deleterious gene by killing the bacteria that carry it; a base editor to modify the genetic code of a deleterious gene, for instance to inactivate it without killing the bacteria expressing it; or a protein/peptide of choice to enable its local production by the commensal microbiome

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For more information about Eligo, visit https://www.eligo.bio/

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