Agents for preventing and treating thrombocytopenia

Patent Number: 6956022

This patent teaches the use of an existing pharmaceutical, parathyroid hormone (or agonists of the parathyroid hormone receptor) for stimulation of platelet production. The patent has one issued claim which covers essentially what was just mentioned. This is an interesting patent because in a publication it states that "Between 1958 and the late 1970s it was learned that PTH (the parathyroid hormone) could directly stimulate the initiation of DNA replication by murine CFU-S (colony-forming unit-spleen)". It is known that these cells are hematopoietic (Whitfield JF. Parathyroid hormone: A novel tool for treating bone marrow depletion in cancer patients caused by chemotherapeutic drugs and ionizing radiation. Cancer Lett. 2006 Mar 13;). Maybe because there was no specific description of a propensity towards platelet production in the prior art that this patent was issued. In any case it is interesting to read this patent since it covers the new use of existing pharmaceuticals.

View this patent on the USPTO website.