Patenting 3D protein structures

The sequencing of entire genomes of living organisms has resulted in new potential inventions in the field of bioinformatics. Such sequence information will revolutionise the field of structural genomics by allowing for the identification of biological molecules, such as DNA, RNA and proteins, involved in disease. The information may also lead to the identification of protein families and mutations in proteins that are potentially related to disease and the determination of the 3D structure of such protein families and mutated proteins. Such 3D structural information has great therapeutic potential. It is useful, inter alia, for understanding the mechanism of action of proteins with respect to disease that, in turn, can lead to new therapies. in addition, the information is useful in rational drug design, for example, the 3D structure of mutated proteins known to have lost a particular desired activity associated with the wild type protein can lead to the identification of a small molecule capable of re-establishing wild type activity; alternatively, it may be desirable to design an inhibitory molecule that binds to the mutated protein and inhibits an undesirable activity associated with the mutated protein. Although such information has great therapeutic potential, there are few issued patents relating to the 3D structural information of proteins. However, under appropriate circumstances, it should be possible to obtain commercially significant patent protection relating to such structure information.