Mammalian common lymphoid progenitor cell

Patent Number: 7,297,329

This patent covers "transplantation of lymphopoietic activity" into a mammal by the transfer of cells possessing "common lymphoid progenitor" activity. Essentially the claims state that this "common lymphoid progenitor" activity correlates with cells that are express low levels of c-kit, high levels of the alpha receptor for interleukin-7 and are lineage negative. This makes sense that it would be a lymphoid progenitor since interleukin-7 is needed for production of T cells and B cells.

Notice that the patent does not talk about natural killer cells, that are known to be of the lymphoid lineage.

These types of patents are interesting since at the time of filing, certain properties were known that correlated with the common lymphoid progenitor activity. Because Irv found some new properties, he was able to get the patent, but what properties are so new, and so non-obvious to actually warrant getting the patent on the composition of matter on the cell? For example, if I was to go and do a proteomic analysis of the cells that Irv describes here and found 100 different proteins and purposely filed patent on cells expressing those proteins but omitted the markers Irv identified, could I still patent his cell?

I know what the obvious answer is, however, if you look through this database and compare a lot of the Stem Cell Patents, you will see numerous cases of such exact examples where patents are issued for the same cell, but people just described it differently.

This is why it will be fun when stem cell products are commercialized...



common lymphoid progenitor cells, wherein the cells in said composition are characterized as expressing c-kit.sup.lo, IL-7R.alpha..sup.+, lin.sup.-, into said recipient; wherein said mammalian common lymphoid progenitor cells give rise to T cells, B cells and natural killer cells, wherein an individual c-kit.sup.lo, IL-7R.alpha..sup.+, lin.sup.- progenitor cell in the composition is capable of giving rise to each of T cells, B cells, and natural killer cells, but not to myeloid cells.

View this patent on the USPTO website.