Abviva, a biomedical company engaged in the development and commercialisation of breast cancer related applications of Mammastatin, has provided further details about worldwide patent protection for its breast cancer risk assessment technology.
According to Abviva, the Japanese Patent Office had issued two patents on the core breast cancer risk assessment technology that may be used for therapeutic applications and in the company’s breast cancer risk assessment test, the Mammastatin Serum Assay (MSA). The patents are the recent of 13 international and US patents to issue to the University of Michigan for breast cancer diagnostic and therapeutic uses of Mammastatin.
The international patents detail methods of use and compositions of Mammastatin in therapeutic and diagnostic applications in the US (7 patents), Australia (2 patents), Canada (1), Europe (1), and Japan (2). The patents have been issued starting in the US and Australia in 2002, and continuing through the two recent patents issued in the current year in Japan.
The MSA was initially developed at the University of Michigan Cancer Center and is licensed exclusively to Abviva by the University for scientific and commercial development as a blood test to assess women’s health. In scientific correlation studies women who tested high with the MSA test showed to have lower risk of breast cancer than women who tested low.
Abviva said that the findings align with results of the original research conducted at the University of Michigan Cancer Center that demonstrated Mammastatin was normally produced by breast epithelial cells in healthy women and was missing or reduced in transformed breast epithelial cells. In previous studies, an independent biostatistician calculated the overall accuracy of the MSA test to be 84-86%.
Barrett Evans, CEO of Abviva, said: “Based upon the patents, we believe that we will be able to aggressively penetrate the largest markets worldwide with confidence that our intellectual property is secure. There are additional patents that have been filed and we are hopeful that we will be able to obtain even further protection of our intellectual property as the company grows.
“This further solidifies the domestic and international intellectual property protection strategy we have implemented with the University of Michigan. The issuance of this patent will be very important as we gain regulatory approval and market presence for the Mammastatin technology internationally. These newest patent grant notifications further expand our worldwide patent protection and marketability for MSA.”