The U.S Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) www.uspto.gov within the Department of Commerce is collaborating with Vice President Joe Biden to advance the Cancer Moonshot effort. Recently, it was announced that the USPTO is launching two major projects.
Approximately, 900 cancer immunotherapy applications are received annually by the USPTO and from around the world. The first project called “Patents 4 Patients” establishes a fast-track review for cancer treatment related to patients.
This free accelerated initiative cuts in half the time it takes to review patent applications in cancer therapy. The aim is to have final decisions made in 12 or fewer months.
The fast track will be open to any applicant including early stage biotechnology companies, universities, and large pharmaceutical firms. The fast track is also open to entities who may have products already in FDA approved clinical trials and these entities will be able to opt in to the accelerations program even if they have a patent application already filed with the office.
Go to the Federal Register www.federalregister.gov (June 29, 2016) pages 42328-42332 for more information on the pilot.
The second project titled “Horizon Scanning Tool” will leverage patent data sets to reveal new insights into investments around cancer therapy research and treatments. With data released through the USPTO Developer Hub in September 2016, users will be able to build visualizations of intellectual property data often an early indicator of meaningful R&D and combine the information with other data.
Ultimately, the scanning tool will illuminate trend lines for new treatments and empower the federal government as well as the medical research and data communities to make more precise funding and policy decisions based on the commercialization lifecycle of the most promising treatments.
This fall, the USPTO’s Office of the Chief Economist, will hold a workshop to bring cancer experts, policymakers, and data scientists together to explore and identify how intellectual property data can be used and combined with other data sets to support research and develop new commercialized therapies.