The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted a notice of allowance (NOA) to RetroSense Therapeutics' patent application No. 12/299,574 covering methods of restoring visual responses with various optogenetic compounds.
The approved patent application, which is part of the 'Pan' patent family, is designed to restore vision in retinal degenerative conditions such as retinitis pigmentosa and dry age-related macular degeneration.
The company said the methods of restoring visual responses include delivering channelrhodopsin and variants thereof, as well as halorhodopsin to retinal neurons with or without the use of cell-type specific promoters including mGluR6 (Grm6).
RetroSense chief executive officer Sean Ainsworth said the company is pleased that the US Patent Office has allowed the patent application, which will expand the coverage of its intellectual property estate.
"RetroSense continues to develop novel intellectual property in the area of optogenetics," Ainsworth added.
"We have also maintained an ongoing strategy to consolidate key intellectual property required to develop and commercialize optogenetics to restore visual responses."
The company said following a NOA, the process resulting in final issuance of a patent involves several administrative steps that are typically completed within a year.