Tuberculosis (TB) is an ancient global public health problem. Several strategies have been applied to develop new and more effective vaccines against TB, from attenuated or inactivated mycobacteria to recombinant subunit or genetic vaccines, including viral vectors. This review aimed to evaluate patents filed between 2010 and 2023 for TB vaccine candidates. It focuses on viral vector-based strategies. A search was carried out in Espacenet, using the descriptors \"mycobacterium and tuberculosis\" and the classification A61K39. Of the 411 patents preliminarily identified, the majority were related to subunit vaccines, with 10 patents based on viral vector platforms selected in this study. Most of the identified patents belong to the United States or China, with a concentration of patent filings between 2013 and 2023. Adenoviruses were the most explored viral vectors, and the most common immunodominant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) antigens were present in all the selected patents. The majority of patents were tested in mouse models by intranasal or subcutaneous route of immunization. In the coming years, an increased use of this platform for prophylactic and/or therapeutic approaches for TB and other diseases is expected. Along with this, expanding knowledge about the safety of this technology is essential to advance its use.

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that the current purely market-driven approaches to drug discovery and development alone are insufficient to drive equitable access to new therapies either in preparation for, or in response to, pandemics. A new global framework driven by equity is under negotiation at the World Health Organization to support pandemic preparedness and response. Some believe that the global intellectual property (IP) system itself is part of the problem and propose a purely Open Science approach. In this article, we discuss how existing IP frameworks and contractual agreements may be used to create rights and obligations to generate a more effective global response in future, drawing on experience gained in the COVID Moonshot program, a purely Open Science collaboration, and the ASAP AViDD drug discovery consortium, which uses a hybrid, phased model of Open Science, patent filing and contractual agreements. We conclude that \'straight to generic\' drug discovery is appropriate in some domains, and that targeted patent protection, coupled with open licensing, can offer a route to generating affordable and equitable access for therapy areas where market forces have failed. The Extended Data contains a copy of our model IP policy, which can be used as a template by other discovery efforts seeking to ensure their drug candidates can be developed for globally equitable and affordable access.
Drug discovery and development organizations usually recoup their investment in this risky and expensive process by filing patents on drug candidates which, if granted, give them a time-limited monopoly on the manufacture, sale or licensing of the drug. This means they can negotiate its price and terms of distribution, which creates distortions in access globally. In an alternative ‘Open Science’ approach, R&D organizations publish all the information about a prospective drug without applying for patents, meaning that anyone can use this knowledge to make and sell the drug, while the R&D organizations have no control over how it is priced or distributed. In a pandemic, fast-spreading viruses must be rapidly contained by delivering drugs to where they are most needed. This requires innovation and global access, but this is stifled in both models – in the first because of patent abuses, in the second because the lack of control may jeopardize the most efficient development. The authors share a model that prioritizes globally fair and affordable pricing by creating ‘maximally permissive licenses’ based on ‘minimally defensive patents’. They explain the practical and bioethical background to their proposals and share an example of collective management of intellectual property and licensing agreement that is being used in the AI-driven Structure-enabled Antiviral Platform (ASAP) Center’s Pandemic Preparedness work.

Patents are essential for transferring scientific discoveries to meaningful products that benefit societies. While the academic community focuses on the number of citations to rank scholarly works according to their \"scientific merit,\" the number of citations is unrelated to the relevance for patentable innovation. To explore associations between patents and scholarly works in publicly available patent data, we propose to utilize statistical methods that are commonly used in biology to determine gene-disease associations. We illustrate their usage on patents related to biotechnological trends of high relevance for food safety and ecology, namely the CRISPR-based gene editing technology (>60,000 patents) and cyanobacterial biotechnology (>33,000 patents). Innovation trends are found through their unexpected large changes of patent numbers in a time-series analysis. From the total set of scholarly works referenced by all investigated patents (~254,000 publications), we identified ~1,000 scholarly works that are statistical significantly over-represented in the references of patents from changing innovation trends that concern immunology, agricultural plant genomics, and biotechnological engineering methods. The detected associations are consistent with the technical requirements of the respective innovations. In summary, the presented data-driven analysis workflow can identify scholarly works that were required for changes in innovation trends, and, therefore, is of interest for researches that would like to evaluate the relevance of publications beyond the number of citations.

UNASSIGNED: Phenomics, an interdisciplinary field that investigates the relationships between genomics and environmental factors, has significantly advanced plant breeding by offering comprehensive insights into plant traits from molecular to physiological levels. This study examines the global evolution, geographic distribution, collaborative efforts, and primary research hubs in plant phenomics from 2000 to 2021, using data derived from patents and scientific publications.
UNASSIGNED: The study utilized data from the EspaceNet and Lens databases for patents, and Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus for scientific publications. The final datasets included 651 relevant patents and 7173 peer-reviewed articles. Data were geocoded to assign country-level geographical coordinates and underwent multiple processing and cleaning steps using Python, Excel, R, and ArcGIS. Social network analysis (SNA) was conducted to assess collaboration patterns using Pajek and UCINET.
UNASSIGNED: Research activities in plant phenomics have increased significantly, with China emerging as a major player, filing nearly 70% of patents from 2010 to 2021. The U.S. and EU remain significant contributors, accounting for over half of the research output. The study identified around 50 global research hubs, mainly in the U.S. (36%), Western Europe (34%), and China (16%). Collaboration networks have become more complex and interdisciplinary, reflecting a strategic approach to solving research challenges.
UNASSIGNED: The findings underscore the importance of global collaboration and technological advancement in plant phenomics. China\'s rise in patent filings highlights its growing influence, while the ongoing contributions from the U.S. and EU demonstrate their continued leadership. The development of complex collaborative networks emphasizes the scientific community\'s adaptive strategies to address multifaceted research issues. These insights are crucial for researchers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders aiming to innovate in agricultural practices and improve crop varieties.

Weeds cause significant agricultural losses worldwide, and herbicides have traditionally been the main solution to this problem. However, the extensive use of herbicides has led to multiple cases of weed resistance, which could generate an increase in the application concentration and consequently a higher persistence in the environment, hindering natural degradation processes. Consequently, more environmentally friendly alternatives, such as microbial bioherbicides, have been sought. Although these bioherbicides are promising, their efficacy remains a challenge, as evidenced by their limited commercial and industrial production. This article reviews the current status of microbial-based bioherbicides and highlights the potential of cell-free metabolites to improve their efficacy and commercial attractiveness. Stirred tank bioreactors are identified as the most widely used for production-scale submerged fermentation. In addition, the use of alternative carbon and nitrogen sources, such as industrial waste, supports the circular economy. Furthermore, this article discusses the optimization of downstream processes using bioprospecting and in silico technologies to identify target metabolites, which leads to more precise and efficient production strategies. Bacterial bioherbicides, particularly those derived from Pseudomonas and Xanthomonas, and fungal bioherbicides from genera such as Alternaria, Colletotrichum, Trichoderma and Phoma, show significant potential. Nevertheless, limitations such as their restricted range of action, their persistence in the environment, and regulatory issues restrict their commercial availability. The utilization of cell-free microbial metabolites is proposed as a promising solution due to their simpler handling and application. In addition, modern technologies, including encapsulation and integrated management with chemical herbicides, are investigated to enhance the efficacy and sustainability of bioherbicides.

Projected to impact 1.6 million people in the UK by 2040 and costing £25 billion annually, dementia presents a growing challenge to society. This study, a pioneering effort to predict the translational potential of dementia research using machine learning, hopes to address the slow translation of fundamental discoveries into practical applications despite dementia\'s significant societal and economic impact. We used the Dimensions database to extract data from 43 091 UK dementia research publications between the years 1990 and 2023, specifically metadata (authors, publication year, etc.), concepts mentioned in the paper and the paper abstract. To prepare the data for machine learning, we applied methods such as one-hot encoding and word embeddings. We trained a CatBoost Classifier to predict whether a publication will be cited in a future patent or clinical trial. We trained several model variations. The model combining metadata, concept and abstract embeddings yielded the highest performance: for patent predictions, an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.84 and 77.17% accuracy; for clinical trial predictions, an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.81 and 75.11% accuracy. The results demonstrate that integrating machine learning within current research methodologies can uncover overlooked publications, expediting the identification of promising research and potentially transforming dementia research by predicting real-world impact and guiding translational strategies.

BACKGROUND: Thailand has expressed interest in joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a twelve-country plurilateral trade agreement whose original incarnation included the United States of America (USA). When the USA withdrew from this agreement, key intellectual property clauses relevant to pharmaceuticals were suspended. These could be reinstated should the CPTPP Parties decide to do so.
METHODS: This study uses two scenarios to cost the impact the CPTPP would have had on Thailand\'s 2020 hepatitis C treatment regime if Thailand joined the CPTPP and suspended clauses were reinstated.
RESULTS: Joining the CPTPP could have increased the cost more than tenfold if suspended CPTPP clauses were reinstated and Thailand was not willing or able to issue compulsory licenses. Based on the 2020 budget, the price for this possible scenario could have reduced hepatitis C treatment coverage by 90%.
CONCLUSIONS: Acceding to trade agreements such as the CPTPP that require increasing intellectual property protection, could compromise Thailand\'s hepatitis C program and other national treatment programs reliant on affordable generic medicines. The CPTPP could also prevent Thailand from relying on its own pharmaceutical capabilities to manufacture medicines needed to sustain its treatment programs.

Genetic testing for inherited cancer risk changed dramatically when the US Supreme Court handed down unanimous rulings in Mayo v. Prometheus (2012) and Myriad v. Association for Molecular Pathology (2013). Those decisions struck down claims to methods based on \'laws of nature\' (Mayo) and DNA molecules corresponding to sequences found in nature (Myriad). Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Christopher Coons (D-DE) introduced legislation that would abrogate those decisions and specify narrow statutory exclusions to patent-eligibility in §101 of the US Patent Act. What would be the consequences of doing so? The Supreme Court decisions coincided with changes in how genetic tests were performed, reimbursed and regulated. Multi-gene sequencing supplanted oligo-gene testing as the cost of sequencing dropped 10,000-fold. Payers dramatically changed reimbursement practices. Food and Drug Administration regulation was proposed and remains in prospect. Databases for clinical interpretation made data freely available, augmenting a knowledge commons. The spectacular implosion of Theranos tempered investment in molecular diagnostics. These factors all complicate explanations of why venture capital funding for molecular diagnostics dropped relative to other sectors. Restoring patent-eligibility would put renewed pressure on other patent doctrines, such as obviousness, enablement and written description, that were not raised in the Supreme Court cases.

Efforts by governments, firms, and patients to deliver pioneering drugs for critical health needs face a challenge of diminishing efficiency in developing those medicines. While multi-sectoral collaborations involving firms, researchers, patients, and policymakers are widely recognized as crucial for countering this decline, existing incentives to engage in drug development predominantly target drug manufacturers and thereby do little to stimulate collaborative innovation. In this mini review, we consider the unexplored potential within pharmaceutical regulations to create novel incentives to encourage a diverse set of actors from the public and private spheres to engage in the kind of collaborative knowledge exchange requisite for fostering enhanced innovation in early drug development.

In recent years, anion exchange membranes (AEMs) have aroused widespread interest in hydrogen production via water electrolysis using renewable energy sources. The two current commercial low-temperature water electrolysis technologies used are alkaline water electrolysis (AWE) and proton exchange membrane (PEM) water electrolysis. The AWE technology exhibited the advantages of high stability and increased cost-effectiveness with low hydrogen production efficiency. In contrast, PEM water electrolysis exhibited high hydrogen efficiency with low stability and cost-effectiveness, respectively. Unfortunately, the major challenges that AEMs, as well as the corresponding ion transportation membranes, including alkaline hydrogen separator and proton exchange membranes, still face are hydrogen production efficiency, long-term stability, and cost-effectiveness under working conditions, which exhibited critical issues that need to be addressed as a top priority. This review comprehensively presented research progress on AEMs in recent years, providing a thorough understanding of academic studies and industrial applications. It focused on analyzing the chemical structure of polymers and the performance of AEMs and established the relationship between the structure and efficiency of the membranes. This review aimed to identify approaches for improving AEM ion conductivity and alkaline stability. Additionally, future research directions for the commercialization of anion exchange membranes were discussed based on the analysis and assessment of the current applications of AEMs in patents.