Benzinga | Oct 15, 2020 07:06AM EDT

Precision BioSciences Announces US Patent Trial And Appeal Board Upholds Allogeneic CAR T Patents

DURHAM, N.C., Oct. 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Precision BioSciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:DTIL), a clinical stage biotechnology company developing allogeneic CAR T and in vivo gene correction therapies with its ARCUS(r) genome editing platform, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has ruled in favor of Precision BioSciences in two patent interference proceedings that challenged nine U.S. patents owned by Precision.

The patents, which issued in 2018, relate to Precision BioSciences' allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell platform. Specifically, the patents relate to allogeneic CAR T cells produced by inserting a gene encoding a CAR into the T cell receptor (TCR) alpha chain (TRAC) locus, as well as methods of using those cells for cancer immunotherapy. CAR T cells produced using this single-step process have exhibited consistent performance, been manufactured at large scale and reduced cost, and shown to protect patients from graft vs. host disease. In the interference proceedings, a third party argued that it had invented the technology in 2012. The PTAB, however, found that the third-party patent application did not satisfy the written description requirement and rejected these claims while maintaining the claims in all nine of Precision's patents.

"We are very pleased that the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board quickly rejected this challenge and affirmed Precision's intellectual property around our patented single-step CAR knock-in/TCR knock-out approach," said Derek Jantz, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of Precision. "Although our patent claims encompass the use of any gene editing technology to produce these allogeneic CAR T cells, we believe that ARCUS is the best gene editor for this purpose due to its ability to very efficiently target the insertion of DNA into the genome."

The proceedings before the PTAB were U.S. Interference Nos. 106,117 and 106,118. The third party has the right to appeal the decisions. The Precision BioSciences patents involved were U.S. Pat. No. 9,889,160, U.S. Pat. No. Patent 9,889,161, U.S. Pat. No. 9,950,010, U.S. Pat. No. 9,950,011, U.S. Pat. No. 9,969,975, U.S. Pat. No. 9,993,501, U.S. Pat. No. 9,993,502, U.S. Pat. No. 10,093,899, and U.S. Pat. No. 10,093,900. Precision BioSciences was represented by Wolf Greenfield & Sacks PC.