InVivo Therapeutics receives notice of allowance on patent covering neuro-spinal scaffold and neuro-spinal scaffold plus stem cells

InVivo Therapeutics Holdings announced that it has received a Notice of Allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for U.S. Patent Application No. 14/177,888, titled “Methods and Compositions for the Treatment of Open and Closed Wound Spinal Cord Injuries”.

The application covers InVivo’s Neuro-Spinal Scaffold, which is currently being studied in a pilot clinical trial, and its Neuro-Spinal Scaffold combined with stem cells, which is being developed for the treatment of chronic spinal cord injury. InVivo is the exclusive licensee of this intellectual property for spinal cord injury and other indications through a license with Boston Children’s Hospital and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A notice of allowance from the USPTO is a written notification that a patent application has cleared internal review and is pending issuance.

Dr. Bob Langer, the first named inventor on the patent application, is one of 11 Institute Professors (the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member) at MIT and one of five living Americans to be awarded both the United States National Medal of Science and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Dr. Langer, who is an InVivo co-founder and Scientific Advisory Board member, said, "This notice of allowance is a significant milestone for InVivo. I am always very pleased to see my research and inventions move forward into the clinic and eventually the market. It is a great pleasure to be working with the current InVivo leadership team, and I have full confidence that they will maximize the clinical and commercial value of these important assets."

Mark Perrin, InVivo Chief Executive Officer, said, "This notice of allowance for a key patent that covers both compositions of matter and methods of use is a principal component of InVivo’s intellectual property portfolio. We at InVivo are dedicated to building a strong intellectual property estate around all of our products. The Boston Children’s Hospital/MIT license is the foundation of InVivo’s intellectual property portfolio, and we are working diligently to create additional layers of protection through inventions and discoveries that have been made and continue to be made at InVivo."