CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vedanta Biosciences, an affiliate of PureTech Health (LSE: PRTC) developing a new category of therapies for immune-mediated and infectious diseases based on rationally defined consortium of human microbiome-derived bacteria, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued four new patents, US 9,801,933, US 9,808,519, US 9,827,276, and US 9,833,483. The new patents broadly cover pharmaceutical compositions including Clostridium bacterial strains and methods of use for therapeutic products, including consortia of bacterial strains and spore-forming fractions based on beneficial bacteria. The newly issued patents are exclusively licensed to Vedanta under an agreement with the University of Tokyo and provide coverage through at least 2031. These issuances further strengthen Vedanta’s leading intellectual property position in the microbiome field, which includes previous issuances US 9,415,079, US 9,421,230, US 9,433,652, US 9,642,882, US 9,662,381, EP2575835, JP5592958, JP5853063, and JP6115971.
“The expansion of our intellectual property estate further establishes Vedanta’s leading IP position in the microbiome field and provides further recognition of the ground-breaking work of Vedanta Biosciences co-founder Dr. Kenya Honda,” said Bernat Olle, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Vedanta Biosciences. “We believe The University of Tokyo patents provide Vedanta a significant competitive advantage in the microbiome field in the development of drugs based on bacterial consortia.”
The new U.S. patent issuances broaden the coverage for several programs in Vedanta’s clinical-stage pipeline, including the lead investigational product candidate, VE303, which has just entered the clinic for the treatment of recurrent C. difficile infections. The issuances also provide an additional layer of support for Vedanta’s therapeutic candidates for the treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), Food Allergy, and other autoimmune and infectious diseases.
About Vedanta Biosciences
Vedanta Biosciences is pioneering development of a new category of therapies for immune-mediated and infectious diseases based on rationally defined consortia of bacteria derived from the human microbiome. An affiliate of PureTech Health (PureTech Health plc, PRTC.L), Vedanta’s founding team includes a group of world-renowned experts in immunology and microbiology. Vedanta Biosciences is a leader in the microbiome field with capabilities and deep expertise to discover, develop and manufacture drugs based on live bacterial consortia. The Company’s facilities include integrated manufacturing operations providing cGMP-compliant manufacturing of rationally-defined bacterial consortia in powder form. Leveraging its proprietary technology platform and the expertise of its team of scientific co-founders, Vedanta Biosciences has isolated and maintains what we believe to be the largest collection of human microbiome-associated bacterial strains and has characterized, in collaborations with leading experts, how the immune system recognizes and responds to these microbes. This pioneering work has led to the identification of human commensal bacteria that induce a range of immune responses – including induction of regulatory T cells, CD8+ 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 (multiple), Nature (multiple), Cell and Nature Immunology. Vedanta Biosciences has harnessed these biological insights, its proprietary library of microbiome-derived bacterial strains, as well as data from clinical translational collaborations, to generate a pipeline of programs addressing infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, inflammation and immune-oncology indications.
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, Keio University School of Medicine). Vedanta is backed by Seventure, Invesco Asset Management, and Rock Springs Capital and has collaborations with leading institutions including Janssen Biotech, Inc., NYU Langone Health and its Perlmutter Cancer Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Leiden University Medical Center, University of Tokyo, Keio University, RIKEN, and the University of South Alabama Mitchell Cancer Institute.
