Vedanta Biosciences Granted Third U.S. Patent Covering Methods Of Treating Infectious And Allergic Diseases With Bacterial Consortia
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vedanta Biosciences, pioneering the development of a novel class of therapies designed to modulate pathways of interaction between the human microbiome and the host immune system, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued U.S. Patent No. 9,433,652. The patent broadly covers methods of treating a variety of diseases including infectious and allergic diseases with mixtures of Clostridium live bacterial strains and further expands Vedanta Biosciences’ patent portfolio after the issuances of U.S. 9,415,079 and U.S. 9,421,230 in August and earlier issuances in Japan. The patents are exclusively licensed to Vedanta Biosciences under an agreement with the University of Tokyo and provide coverage through at least 2031.
“This third U.S. issuance further reinforces our patent portfolio around products based on bacterial consortia, and it also provides important protection for several programs in our pipeline”
The patented technology is based on ground-breaking work by Dr. Kenya Honda, a scientific co-founder of Vedanta Biosciences. Dr. Honda’s work shows that compositions of bacterial strains belonging to Clostridium clusters IV and/or XIVa may potentially be used to treat a range of diseases including infectious, allergic and autoimmune diseases.
“This third U.S. issuance further reinforces our patent portfolio around products based on bacterial consortia, and it also provides important protection for several programs in our pipeline,” said Bernat Olle, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Vedanta Biosciences.
About Vedanta Biosciences
Vedanta
Biosciences is pioneering development of a novel class of therapies
designed to modulate pathways of interaction between the human
microbiome and the host immune system, with clinical trials in certain
indications expected to begin in the first half of 2017. Founded by PureTech
Health (PureTech Health plc, PRTC.L) and a group of world-renowned
experts in immunology and microbiology, Vedanta Biosciences is a leader
in the microbiome field with capabilities to discover, develop and
manufacture drugs based on live commensal microbes. Leveraging its
proprietary technology platform and the expertise of its team of
scientific cofounders, Vedanta Biosciences has isolated a vast
collection of human-associated bacterial strains and characterized how
the immune system recognizes and responds to these microbes. This work
has led to the identification of human commensal bacteria that induce a
range of immune responses – including induction of regulatory T cells
and Th17 cells, among others – as well as the characterization of novel
molecular mechanisms of microbial-host communication. These advances
have been published in leading peer-reviewed journals including Science,
Nature
(multiple),
Cell
and Nature
Immunology. Vedanta Biosciences has harnessed these
biological insights as well as data from clinical translational
collaborations to generate a pipeline of programs in development for
infectious disease, autoimmune disease, inflammation and
immune-oncology. The clinical potential of therapeutic manipulation of
the microbiome has been validated by multiple randomized, controlled
trials in infectious disease and inflammatory bowel disease.
Vedanta Biosciences’ scientific co-founders have pioneered the fields of innate immunity, Th17 and regulatory T cell biology, and include Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov (Professor of Immunobiology at Yale), Dr. Alexander Rudensky (tri-institutional Professor at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute, the Rockefeller University and Cornell University), Dr. Dan Littman (Professor of Molecular Immunology at NYU), Dr. Brett Finlay (Professor at the University of British Columbia) and Dr. Kenya Honda (Professor, School of Medicine, Keio University).
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Contacts
PureTech
Allison Mead, +1 617-651-3156
Director,
Communications and Investor Relations
amead@puretechhealth.com