Morphotek granted two European technology patents

Morphotek has announced that the European Patent Office has given a "Decision of Grant" regarding the Company's US Patent 6,921,666 entitled "Methods for Generating Hypermutable Yeast" and US Patent 6,737,268 entitled "A Method for Generating Genetically Altered Antigens."

These patents cover inventions regarding the Company's whole genome evolution platform technologies that can improve the pharmacologic activity of therapeutic biologicals as well as cell hosts for improved product manufacturing.

Patent 6,921,666 covers the use of mismatch repair (MMR) inhibitors for generating functional diversity in yeast, to yield sibling cells exhibiting desirable phenotypes for target discovery, drug screening and/or product development. Patent 6,737,268 covers the use of MMR inhibitors in vaccine production cell lines to yield sibling cells producing evolved vaccines with increased immunogenic activity and/or enhanced pharmacokinetic properties. These grants provide Morphotek the exclusive right to employ these technologies in 20 designated countries across the European Union.

The MMR pathway is a highly conserved process that all living organisms use to repair naturally occurring mutations that occur during DNA replication. The selective regulation of the MMR function via morphogenics results in an unbiased, undirected and accelerated rate of genetic evolution within a living host organism. Morphotek employs morphogenics to discover and develop novel proteins and antibodies for diagnosing and treating cancer, inflammatory and infectious diseases. The technology has been validated through research collaborations with premier academic and corporate partners including Amgen, Centocor, John Wayne Cancer Institute, GlaxoSmithKline, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, Novo Nordisk, Protein Design Labs, Wistar Institute, Wyeth and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases as well as through its application to internal development candidates "MORAb-003" and "MORAb-009" currently in clinical development for the treatment of ovarian and pancreatic cancer, respectively.