The Influential Patent That's Driving Anti-Aging Research

Patent Filed Centred on Single Celled Yeast

The U.S. Patent filed centred on a single celled yeast strain closely related to the microbes utilised in baking and brewing are much bigger that pretzels and beers. As per researchers, it would probably lead to the treatments for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s slow down aging or also help in longevity of life. This patent according to an analysis performed by Reuters and Thomson Reuters IP & Science, its sister company, has emerged as the most cited discovery from academic research in recent years.

David Goldfarb, patent’s sole inventor who owns four other patents and a professor in the Department of Biology at University of Rochester has commented that people really want molecules which extend lifespan. As part of the World’s most innovative universities ranking, Reuter viewed tens of thousands of patents filed by researchers at global universities and counted each time a filing cited other patents as previous art.

 The outcome portrayed more scientists who stated that Goldfarb’s research had inspired their work more than any other recent discovery – 108 certifications since the patent was first filed in Nov. 17, 2010. The Patent had been sourced from Thomson Reuters World Patents Index and restricted to filings from the period 2008-2012 to enable adequate time for patent examinations to be conducted and certification to be accumulated.

Cellular Regulatory Proteins – Sirtuins

The area of Goldfarb’s research is not new and his patent is not the first to benefit from it. From late 1990s, the well-known press and research literature had dedicated sufficient attention to resveratrol, a chemical which appears in red wine and which tends to extend yeast lifespan by increasing the expression of a course of cellular regulatory proteins known as sirtuins.

The effect of resveratrol on one sirtuin, SIRTI had been discovered by the researchers led by David Sinclair, a Harvard University biologist. Sinclair had in 2005 spun out the research into a start-up – Sirtris Pharmaceuticals and the company had been acquired by GlaxoSmithKline in 2008 for $720 million. The research of Goldfarb had been built on his earlier discoveries and in his previous patent, Michael Breitenbach and Goldfarb at the University of Salzburg in Austria, had created a new system of locating compounds which could extend the lifespan of cells.

Epizyme’s Drug Could Treat Mantle Cell Lymphoma

Goldfarb’s work continued inspite of early criticism from aristocracies, in the international research circles that took keen interest in his aim on an unusual subset of chemicals which altered the lifespan of yeast. It was those prudently engineered chemicals which had a major implication on the drugs for the future treatment of cancer, diabetes and obesity like PRMTS inhibitors.

Others like 12 lipoxygenase inhibitors could lead to drugs which could block the inflammation process that contribute to diabetes and heart disease and pyruvate kinase M2 activators which could ultimately eliminate the toughest of cancer cells. Out of these discoveries, any one of them could lead in turn to prolong human life.

These products and treatments are way ahead and researchers as well as pharmaceutical companies quoting Goldfarb’s patent do not yet have their compounds ready for clinical trials. The nearest drug so far developed by biopharmaceutical manufacturer Epizyme quoted Goldfarb’s work in the patent. Epizyme had licensed the drug to GlaxoSmithKline and the two companies had reported at last year’s American Society of Hematology meeting that the drug could lead to treatment for mantle cell lymphoma a rare cancer which typically affects men over the age of 60.