ARECOR’S POLYSACCHARIDE VACCINE PATENT UPHELD
Cambridge, UK, 11 October 2021: Arecor Therapeutics plc (AIM: AREC), the biopharmaceutical group advancing today’s therapies to enable healthier lives, continues to build a strong patent portfolio protecting its proprietary Arestat™ technology. Arecor is pleased to announce that its European patent EP2457590 on polysaccharide vaccines has been successfully upheld following opposition appeal proceedings filed by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals SA (GSK) at the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office.
As part of the Intellectual Property legislation in Europe, patents can be opposed by other companies, within a certain period of time following their formal grant. The opposition process can result in the patent being revoked, amended or upheld in its original form. In accordance with this process, at an oral hearing on 1 October 2021, the Boards of Appeal, which is the final judicial instance in the procedures, considered an appeal filed by GSK in response to an earlier ruling in Arecor’s favour and decided to dismiss the appeal, upholding the patent as granted.
Arecor’s European patent EP2457590 protects novel compositions of a specific type of vaccines, called
polysaccharide vaccines. Examples of polysaccharide vaccines are vaccines that are used to protect against Meningitis or Pneumonia. Such products are known to degrade over time, leading to gradual loss of potency.
Arecor’s novel compositions protected by this patent, prevent such degradation and enable the development of improved polysaccharide vaccines. This includes more convenient dosage forms that can be used outside the cold chain, thereby increasing the efficiency of immunisation coverage.
Arecor has invested in building a strong patent portfolio to protect the Arestat™ technology platform. The Group’s intellectual property portfolio currently comprises 33 patent families, including >50 granted patents in Europe in the US and in other key territories.
Arecor’s proprietary formulation technology, Arestat™, enables superior product profiles across a broad range of therapies, including various types of biopharmaceuticals, specialty hospital products as well as vaccine compositions with improved stability. Arecor partners with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to deliver enhanced formulations of their therapeutic products under a technology licensing model, and is also developing an internal portfolio of proprietary products in diabetes and other indications.
Dr Jan Jezek, Chief Scientific Officer at Arecor, commented: “We are delighted about the successful outcome of this appeal. Having developed a highly innovative formulation technology, Arecor has firmly established itself as a world leader in the formulation of superior therapeutic and vaccine products. The value of our ArestatTM technology platform is underpinned by a comprehensive patent portfolio built systematically around specific aspects of our technology, as well as the highly differentiated products enabled by our technology. Our success in the appeal hearing demonstrates the value and the strength of our innovative formulation science and associated intellectual property. Polysaccharide vaccines represent an important class of vaccines for preventing infections such as meningitis or pneumonia. Our proprietary compositions enable formulating such vaccines in a way that simplifies their administration to patients.”