Porton Down, UK; 22 April 2013: GW Pharmaceuticals plc (AIM: GWP), a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing novel therapeutics from its proprietary cannabinoid product platform, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a Notice of Allowance for U.S. Application Serial Number 13/606,742, a patent application directed to the spray device of its Sativex® product formulation. A Notice of Allowance is issued after the USPTO makes a determination that a patent can be granted from an application.
The patent claims a metered valve pump spray device consisting of a liquid cannabis extract, in propylene glycol and ethanol, which is adapted to spray a dose towards a patient’s sublingual mucosa. The issued patent from this application is expected to expire in March 2021.
“This Notice of Allowance directed to the Sativex delivery device comes soon after the 13/607,897 Notice of Allowance directed to a method of sublingual delivery of the Sativex pharmaceutical formulation. Not only does GW have claims directed to the method of sublingual delivery of the Sativex formulation, but it also has claims directed to the device within which it is contained,” stated Justin Gover, GW’s Chief Executive Officer. “In total, we now have seven different patent families containing one or more pending or issued patents relating to Sativex.”
GW’s intellectual property portfolio includes multiple patent families with issued or pending claims directed to plants, plant extracts, extraction technology, pharmaceutical formulations, drug delivery and the therapeutic uses of cannabinoids, as well as plant variety rights, know-how and trade secrets.
GW’s granted patents and pending applications (if they were to issue) in the US relating to Sativex would expire on various dates between 2021 and 2026, excluding possible patent term extensions.
In the US, Sativex is currently in Phase 3 clinical development as a potential treatment of pain in people with advanced cancer. This Phase 3 program is intended to support the submission of a New Drug Application for Sativex in cancer pain with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and elsewhere.
Source: gwpharm.com
