It is very interesting that these Intellectual Property concerns always get expressed when our share price is going up or is up.
Don't recall people losing sleep of this matter when we were at $0.37, or even the 40s, 50s or 60s...
Anyways, thought it deserves a separate thread.
Regarding the IP licenced both exclusively and non-exclusively to Cynata:
@bpinvestnstocks, I stick to my former statement, that it doesn't matter "which side of the fence" the IP (you mentioned iPSCs in particular) is being kept in our case.
But first I'd like to comment on another post of yours, in which you made two statements.
Your first statement seems correct (making an unlimited amount of iPSCs serum-free under defined conditions), however if instead of iPSC it was meant to say MSC, it's a completely different story with a different outcome...
The second statement
"No there are at least two processes I know of for changing iPSCs to MSCs. One involves OP9 stromal cells, the other later one (a refinement of the earlier one using factors and regulating the oxygen levels to the cells) doesn't. Separate patents* apply (*in the later case the patent is notified but not yet granted) - cover the two processes."
seems correct as well - all in my opinion:
The two processes you describe - one is using OP9 Feeder Cells derived from mice (not appropriate for use in humans according to Slukvin and WARF by the way) and the other one is a mouse feeder cell/serum free, Tenascin-C Differentiation method (application number US 61/779564, filed on 13/03/13 and an announcement expected in March 2018 according to one of your previous posts) is not the whole Cymerus process to derive MSCs from iPSCs.
There is a whole network of patents surrounding it - kind of like an investment portfolio that progressively improved and still improves over time.
While early IP covered production of MCAs from PSCs using OP9 Feeder cells, changed to MSCs to MCAs (still using moise feeder layers), there is now exclusively licenced IP covering production of MSCs from MCAs and MCAs from PSCs under defined conditions in the absence of non-human components (Tenascin-C).
One of them being this one here:
"Methods and materials for hematoendothelial differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells under defined conditions" (patent family: US14206778 & patent application US20140273211A1), which is as per asx announcement dated 07/12/17 "owned by the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and is amongst the intellectual property licensed exclusively from WARF to Cynata".
https://www.asx.com.au/asx/statistics/displayAnnouncement.do?display=pdf&idsId=01931468
(I assume that this is the one you were referring to before)
Cynata filed for a patent (amongst others) citing this one, called "Colony forming medium and use thereof", inventors being Igor Slukvin, Gene Uenishi, Derek Hei (look at that...) and Diana Drier.
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2017156580A1/en
As you can see, we licenced the core technology and filed for our own patents (not licenced from WARF) around it.
Whilst there are more processes out there then just the 2 processes to change iPSCs to MSCs you have described, none of them is capable of "producing commercially relevant quantities of very pure and well characterised mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)" (
http://cynata.com/platformtechnology/), which is likely due to their approach which does not utilize the benefits of MCA precursor cells. And none of them is established by a commercial enterprise, instead only a few researchers producing a limited number of iPSC derived MSCs for e.g. disease modelling. Here is one of these other processes:
https://stemcellres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13287-015-0137-7
Coming back to my statement about exclusivity.
You said:
"What is actually important or should be to CYP holders is understanding where the IP (intellectual property) boundary fences are. As the iPSCs are on the other side - the CDI/Fujifilm (also Slukvin) side of the fence not the exclusively CYP side of the fence."
You referred to the prospectus and the comments about exclusive/non-exclusive intellectual property.
MCAs don't just have the potential to differentiate into MSCs, but instead can also be used to generate pure populations of so called vasculogenic cells (i.e. pericytes and smooth muscle cells), which is of no use for our Cymerus platform, but can be "utilized for therapeutic tissue engineering, e.g., creating new blood vessels to treat peripheral artery disease." Therefore the iPSC/MCA bit can not be included in the exclusive part, otherwise WARF can't seek a commercial partner to develop it, which is what they are doing now (only posted this week):
http://wisconsintechnologycouncil.c...genic-cell-populations-from-human-stem-cells/
https://www.warf.org/technologies/p...ations-from-human-stem-cells-p130364us02.cmsx
The License Agreement between WARF and Cynata however grants Cynata "world-wide exclusive rights to certain patented (one granted patent and certain patent applications) IP forming part of the Cynata Technology comprised in Appendix B-2 ["Generation of clonal mesenchymal progenitors and mesenchymal stem cell lines under serum-free conditions"] the License Agreement as described in Section 8 in relation to making, using, selling, importing, and offering for sale certain products for certain therapeutic and diagnostic uses [...]."
This now commercially viable Cymerus Technology ("Cynata technology" combined with licenced progressive improvements both worldwide exclusively and non-exclusively licenced to Cynata as well as patents fully owned by Cynata) is in safe hands - our hands - and is finally ready to revolutionise the MSC market!
I'd also like to point out that a team of Japanese lawyers spent months of due diligence back in 2016 and 2017.
FujiFilm's CDI holds iPSC patents and even sells MSCs (part of their icell range). They make the following clear statement on their website:
"However, limitations including preparation and donor variability, as well as overall scalability, present challenges for utilizing MSCs in research. Thus, there is a need across the scientific community for a reliable source of highly pure, industrial quantities of MSCs."
https://cellulardynamics.com/products-services/icell-products/icell-mesenchymal-stem-cells/
If they had any sort of concern about our IP or saw another way of accessing a process similar to Cymerus without having to spend an Aussie Dollar, I'm sure they would have not entered into a licence option agreement with us for CYP-001 I'm GvHD and/or acquired 10.01% (at the time, pre CR) our shares.
