Recent Patents on Biotechnology - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2011

Baculovirus has been widely utilized as a protein production tool in insect cells for nearly 3 decades and has captured growing interests as a vector for gene delivery into mammalian cells and animals over the past decade. This review summarizes important patents pertaining to the use of baculovirus for insect cell infection and mammalian cell transduction, with special emphasis on the vector development, new applications and downstream processing.

To focus on the recent adoption, patents, experience, and future of Robotic assisted surgery (RAS) applications in gynecologic surgery, a computer aided and manual search for clinical and systematic reviews, randomized controlled trials, prospective observational studies, retrospective studies and case reports published between 1970 and January of 2011 has been performed. The use of RAS in gynecologic patients includes hysterectomy, myomectomy, tubal reanastomoses, radical hysterectomy, lymph node dissection, and sacrocolpopexies. Although individual studies vary, gynecological RAS is often associated with longer operating room time but similar clinical outcomes, decreased blood loss, and shorter hospital stay. RAS procedures on women have, however, their own limitations: the patented equipment is very large, bulky, and expensive, the staff must be trained specifically on draping and docking the instruments, the lack of surgical haptic feedback, a limited vaginal access, a limited specific instrumentation, and the need for larger port incisions requiring fascial closure. The RAS significantly facilitates gynecologic surgery, even if well-designed, prospective studies are needed to fully assess the value of this equipments in particular studies with well-defined clinical and long-term outcomes, including complications, cost, pain, return to normal activity, and quality of life. The future of robotic surgery in gynecology may be bright, but currently, caution is advisable and clinically meaningful long-term outcomes are needed. These recent patents, however, has exciting potential for future applications, especially in long-distance telesurgery and might change the paradigm of gynecologic surgery in the future.

Our environment is contaminated with organic and inorganic compounds released by anthropogenic activities that cause negative impacts on biological productivity and ecosystem sustainability and place human health at risk. Within the available remediation technologies, phytoremediation has emerged with high potential due to its reduced environmental impacts and economic costs. The research into phytoremediation has developed through a wide array of approaches, which also pertains to its inherent interdisciplinary characteristics, towards enhancing the potential of the technology for application in the field. Numerous patents present molecular solutions through which plants can be engineered to display improvements in key characteristics, such as the tolerance, uptake and accumulation of contaminants. The manipulation of plant growth and of the physico-chemical characteristics of the contaminated environments in order to enhance the remediation potential has also been the focus of several issued patents. This review attempts to highlight the most relevant patented advances in phytoremediation and to emphasise recent research efforts through which this green technology might be expected to develop into a commercially competitive alternative to other remediation methods.

Maintenance of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) pool depends on fine balance between self-renewal and differentiation of HSCs. HSCs normally reside within the bone marrow niche of an adult mammal. The embryonic development of HSCs is a complex process that involves the migration of developing HSCs in multiple anatomical sites. Throughout the process, developing HSCs receive internal (transcriptional program) and external (HSC niche) signals, which direct them to maintain balance between self-renewal and differentiation, also to generate a pool of HSCs. In physiological condition HSCs differentiate into all mature cell types present in the blood. However, in pathological condition they may differentiate into non-hematological cells according to the need of the body. It was shown that HSCs can transdifferentiate into cell types that do not belong to the hematopoietic system suggests a complete paradigm shift of the hierarchical hematopoietic tree. This review describes the developmental origins and regulation of HSCs focusing on developmental signals that induce the adult hematopoietic stem cell program, as these informations are very critical for manipulating conditions for expansion of HSCs in ex vivo condition. This review also states clinical application and related patents using HSC.

Drug delivery systems are designed to improve therapy efficacy as well as patient compliance. This could be accomplished by specifically targeting a medication intact to its active site, therefore reducing side-effects and enabling high local drug concentrations. Silica nanoparticles have gained ground in the biomedical field for their biocompatibility and biodegradability, being themselves inert and stable, thus enabling a variety of formulation designs for application in the pharmaceutical industry. This paper is a review of the recent patents on the applications of silica nanoparticles for drug delivery and their preparation. The review will focus on the different techniques available to obtain silica nanoparticles with variable morphology and their drug targeting applications, providing an overview of silica particles synthesis described in the literature.

The patents annotated in this section have been selected from various patent data bases. These recent patents are relevant to the articles published in this journal issue, categorized by different biotechnology methods, processes and techniques involved.