Interference proceedings and innovation goals of the CRISPR-Cas9 patent

Abstract

... The United States' Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), formerly US Patent and Trademark Office’s Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI),1 decided a highly contested interference proceeding concerning the Type-II CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology in February 2017.2Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) has been hailed as one of the most important innovations of bio-science in the 21st century.3 It allows scientists to edit gene sequences in an effective manner, akin to a word processor. This is a sharp improvement from pre-existing methods like Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases (TALENs) and Zinc-Finger Nucleases (ZFNs) in biological research.4 CRISPR is an adaptive immune process first noticed in bacteria. Jennifer Doudna, of the University of California, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, now at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, published an article in 2012 demonstrating the use of this process to edit genome sequences in vitro (‘Jinek 2012’).5 By delivering a synthetic RNA protein, the CRISPR-Cas9 enzyme could be guided to a specific gene site. The process enabled them to remove specific genes or add new ones and change the genetic sequencing. Doudna and Charpentier filed for a patent before the USPTO in March 2013.