 |
|
| Back Issues |
|
|
|
|
ACS Members can sign up to receive C&EN e-mail newsletter.  |
|
|
 Join ACS |
|
|||||||||
|
BIOTECHNOLOGY
As the production of biopharmaceuticals in green plants starts to go from pipe dream to pipeline, commercial issues are heating up. Because of an earlier agreement, Epicyte Pharmaceutical holds exclusive commercial rights to U.S. Patent No. 6,417,429--recently granted to Scripps Research Institute--which broadly claims any transgenic plant that expresses an antibody from any animal species. Andrew Hiatt, Epicyte's vice president of R&D, says the patent positions the firm as "the dominant player in this potentially large market." Epicyte is developing corn-derived proteins, such as its herpes simplex virus treatment HX8, in partnership with Dow Chemical. John McClellan, director of marketing at competitor ProdiGene, maintains that the patent isn't likely to affect his company, citing an earlier alliance between the two firms and industry questions about the patent's validity. Yet it shows that the gloves are coming off in the emerging field of plant-derived biopharmaceuticals. "The idea is here to stay," he says. "Who survives remains to be seen." ProdiGene said last week that it is beginning to scale up corn-based aprotinin, a protease inhibitor used in cardiac surgery that is now derived from bovine lungs. The company, which claims to be the only firm to market a recombinant protein from a transgenic plant, expects to sell aprotinin into nondrug markets by early next year. McClellan says preclinical trials for therapeutic applications will begin this fall.
|
|||||||||
|
Chemical & Engineering News |
|||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
