Benitec Initiates Patent Infringement Lawsuit
Queensland. Benitec Ltd announced that it initiated patent infringement lawsuits in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware against Nucleonics, Inc., Ambion, Inc., and Genscript Corporation to protect its gene silencing technologies. The lawsuit alleges that the three companies are infringing issued US Patent, entitled "Genetic Constructs for Delaying or Repressing the Expression of a Target Gene."
Benitec currently has 7 issued patents in 5 jurisdictions, including the USA, UK and Australia, and has over 60 pending RNAi based patent applications in advanced stages of prosecution in 14 other jurisdictions. Benitec was the first company to trigger RNAi in human and mammalian cells and in whole mammals and holds the only issued patents covering RNAi in mammalian cells.
Benitec's patented technology, known as DNA directed RNA interference (ddRNAi), employs DNA constructs to induce RNA interference (RNAi) in cells. RNAi is a natural cellular mechanism that selectively knocks down or silences a targeted gene by destroying messenger RNA (mRNA). It is triggered by double stranded RNA, where one strand is identical to the target mRNA. Benitec's DNA directed RNAi (ddRNAi) technology involves inserting a DNA construct into a cell to trigger production of double stranded RNA, resulting in the destruction of the target mRNA and selectively silencing or knocking down the expression of the target gene.
The ddRNAi approach has several potential advantages when compared with alternative gene silencing technologies under development, such as antisense RNA, and synthetic and chemically modified siRNA. These advantages include more versatile delivery options, simultaneous multiple gene disabling, the ability to silence genes in whole organisms (transgenic ddRNAi), and the ability to control the expression and timing of gene silencing.
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