Nanoparticle tethered antioxidant response element as a biosensor for oxygen induced toxicity in retinal endothelial cells

Purpose: A novel system, based on biosensor DNA tethered to a nanoparticle, was developed for the treatment of retinopathy of prematurity. Methods: The construction of a five-layered nanoparticle was visualized with gel electrophoresis. Transcriptionally active PCR products (TAP) containing the biosensor sequence, were bioconjugated to the surface of magnetic nanoparticles yielding biosensor tethered magnetic nanoparticles (MNP). The biosensor was based on an enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) reporter gene driven by an enhanced antioxidant response element ( ARE). Image analysis and flow cytometry were used to characterize MNP delivery and biosensor activity. Results: The MNP penetrated dividing and migrating cells more often than quiescent endothelial cells in a wound-healing in vitro assay. Prussian blue staining demonstrated that more cells have nanoparticle cores than are transfected. When compared to naked TAP alone, MNP transfected more cells in a dose dependent manner. Both the biosensor alone and MNP induce gene expression in the presence of hyperoxia, greater than 1.5 fold over normoxic controls. These data also show that the MNP had a signal to noise ratio of 0.5 greater than the plasmid form of the biosensor as demonstrated by flow cytometry. Conclusions: This approach has the potential to allow the endothelial cells of the retinal vasculature to prevent or treat themselves after hyperoxic insult, rather than systemic treatment to protect or treat only the retina

Patent Pools: Intellectual Property Rights and Competition

Patent pools do not correct all problems associated with patent thickets. In this respect, patent pools might not stop the outsider problem from striking pools. Moreover, patent pools can be expensive to negotiate, can exclude patent holders with smaller numbers of patents or enable a group of major players to form a cartel that excludes new competitors. For all the above reasons, patent pools are subject to regulatory clearance because they could result in a monopoly. The aim of this article is to present the relationship between patents and competition in a broad context

The Problem of Patent Thickets in Convergent Technologies

Patent thickets are unintentionally dense webs of overlapping intellectual property rights owned by different companies that can retard progress. This article begins with a review of existing research on patent thickets, focusing in particular on the problem of patent thickets in nanotechnology, or nanothickets. After presenting visual evidence of the presence of nanothickets using a network analytic technique, it discusses potential organizational responses to patent thickets. It then reviews the existing research on patent pools and discusses pool formation in the shadow of antitrust enforcement. Based on recent research on patent pool formation, it examines the divergent fate of two recent pools and discusses the prospects for the future formation of nanotechnology patent pools, or nanopools.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72678/1/annals.1382.014.pd

Agricultural Biotechnology's Complementary Intellectual Assets

We formulate and test a hypothesis to explain the dramatic restructuring experienced recently by the plant breeding and seed industry. The reorganization can be explained in part by the desire to exploit complementarities between intellectual assets needed to create genetically modified organisms. This hypothesis is tested using data on agricultural biotechnology patents, notices for field tests of genetically modified organisms, and firm characteristics. The presence of complementarities is identified with a positive covariance in the unexplained variation of asset holdings. Results indicate that coordination of complementary assets have increased under the consolidation of the industry

The Changing Life Science Patent Landscape

What have we learned from 20 tumultuous years of patent law in the life sciences? Is patenting likely to be as important for the industry in the future?Ope

Intellectual Property, Open Science and Research Biobanks

In biomedical research and translational medicine, the ancient war between exclusivity (private control over information) and access to information is proposing again on a new battlefield: research biobanks. The latter are becoming increasingly important (one of the ten ideas changing the world, according to Time magazine) since they allow to collect, store and distribute in a secure and professional way a critical mass of human biological samples for research purposes. Tissues and related data are fundamental for the development of the biomedical research and the emerging field of translational medicine: they represent the “raw material” for every kind of biomedical study. For this reason, it is crucial to understand the boundaries of Intellectual Property (IP) in this prickly context. In fact, both data sharing and collaborative research have become an imperative in contemporary open science, whose development depends inextricably on: the opportunities to access and use data, the possibility of sharing practices between communities, the cross-checking of information and results and, chiefly, interactions with experts in different fields of knowledge. Data sharing allows both to spread the costs of analytical results that researchers cannot achieve working individually and, if properly managed, to avoid the duplication of research. These advantages are crucial: access to a common pool of pre-competitive data and the possibility to endorse follow-on research projects are fundamental for the progress of biomedicine. This is why the "open movement" is also spreading in the biobank's field. After an overview of the complex interactions among the different stakeholders involved in the process of information and data production, as well as of the main obstacles to the promotion of data sharing (i.e., the appropriability of biological samples and information, the privacy of participants, the lack of interoperability), we will firstly clarify some blurring in language, in particular concerning concepts often mixed up, such as “open source” and “open access”. The aim is to understand whether and to what extent we can apply these concepts to the biomedical field. Afterwards, adopting a comparative perspective, we will analyze the main features of the open models – in particular, the Open Research Data model – which have been proposed in literature for the promotion of data sharing in the field of research biobanks. After such an analysis, we will suggest some recommendations in order to rebalance the clash between exclusivity - the paradigm characterizing the evolution of intellectual property over the last three centuries - and the actual needs for access to knowledge. We argue that the key factor in this balance may come from the right interaction between IP, social norms and contracts. In particular, we need to combine the incentives and the reward mechanisms characterizing scientific communities with data sharing imperative