BARD1 Life Sciences receives timely Japanese patent
Australian biotech company BARD1 Life Sciences (ASX: BD1) has been granted an important patent for cancer diagnostics in Japan.
The Japan Patent Office issued Japanese Patent number P6271636, titled “BARD1 isoforms in lung and colorectal cancer and use thereof” on 12 January with BARD1 reporting the milestone earlier today.
The news means BARD1 is making progress to secure its intellectual property rights globally and will prevent other companies from exploiting the same technology.
Having listed on the ASX in mid-2016, BARD1 has made steady progress towards commercialising its diagnostic technology. Last year, BARD1 signed a collaboration agreement with the Institute for Respiratory Health (IRH) to evaluate BARD1’s proprietary cancer vaccine.
BARD1 develops non-invasive cancer diagnostics to help doctors detect cancer of various types more effectively compared to current methods. Therefore, the granted patent in Japan helps BARD1 to secure its intellectual property rights in Japan and could ensure market dominance within this biotech niche.
This patent family safeguards BARD1 technology specific to lung and colorectal cancer, a method for detecting the presence of the specific BARD1 isoforms, and a method for treating and/or preventing lung cancer and colorectal cancer.
BARD1’s proprietary technology platform is based on novel tumour markers with potential diagnostic and therapeutic applications across multiple cancers.
The development pipeline includes two BARD1 autoantibody tests in early development for early detection of lung and ovarian cancers and a cancer vaccine project at research-stage for treatment of cancer.
Additional diagnostic projects are being evaluated for prostate, breast and other cancers.
The patent grant announced today was filed in the name of Université De Genève (UNIGE) and Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève (HUG) on 17 August 2011 and is due to expire on 17 August 2031.
A full list of BARD1’s patents including their status is shown below:
In the interim, BARD1 is pursuing other ventures including a non-invasive ovarian cancer diagnostic study which recently delivered positive results validating BARD1’s technology.
Despite the Japanese patent being granted on January 12th, 2018, today’s announcement by BARD1 saw its shares soar by 27% at market open to trade at $0.014 at the time of writing.