Friday, May 1, 2015

Patent Infrigement: Obvious or Nonobvious

As companies file for new chemical entity patents, the question of infringement on an existing drug becomes either obvious or nonobvious.  This link to an article titled Deuterated Drugs: Unexpectedly Nonobvious? is a nice paper by Ms. Kristen Buteau on what constitutes obvious from nonobvious inventions, and how it relates to drug companies such as Auspex, and Concert Pharmaceuticals.  The company that is applying for a new patent must present an unexpected difference between the claimed structures and the prior art. That difference may be the new drugs unexpected metabolism rate, other pharmacokinetic advantages, or a reduced dosing regimen compared to the prior drug.  But any unexpected difference must not be obvious, must be a skill or art in itself, such as the placing of deuterium on a drug that could have many options to choose from, potentially thousands, as the drug Cymbalta has.

Concert Pharmaceuticals is currently in a phase 1 trial to test d-Ivacaftor, which is the deuterated version of Ivacaftor, a drug that is currently approved for the treatment of Cystic Fibrosis.  Not only was the deuterated drug (d-Ivacaftor) patent filed before any mention of deuterium from Vertex Pharmaceutical, but the unexpected differences in pre-clinical studies suggest, that the deutered Ivacaftor version from Concert, improved pharmacokinetics to a high degree, both in-vitro and in-vivo, and may have the convenience of single 24 hour dosing compared to twice daily.  This phase 1 trial will show how (deuterated) d-Ivacaftor does in it's first in human clinical trial on safety, tolerability, and PK, versus the placebo Ivacaftor, and demonstrate whether some of the pre-clinical results are equally impressive in healthy human subjects. Thank you for reading.

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