Mayo, Myriad, America Invents Act and BPCIA: how has the United States biopharmaceutical market been affected?

This paper discusses how the United States biopharmaceutical market has been affected by recent changes in patent law resulting from United States legislations (Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act and the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act) and Supreme Court precedents (Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. and Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics). The authors interviewed eight key opinion leaders from the United States knowledgeable in biopharmaceuticals, including industry veterans, patent counsel, senior scientists and jurists. This paper summarizes the opinions of the key opinion leaders. This paper explains the impact of these Supreme Court decisions - i.e., broadening the exceptions to patent eligibility for law of nature and natural phenomenon - on biopharmaceutical innovations and provides future perspectives.

IMP1 promotes tumor growth, dissemination and a tumor-initiating cell phenotype in colorectal cancer cell xenografts.

Igf2 mRNA binding protein 1 (IMP1, CRD-BP, ZBP-1) is a messenger RNA binding protein that we have shown previously to regulate colorectal cancer (CRC) cell growth in vitro. Furthermore, increased IMP1 expression correlates with enhanced metastasis and poor prognosis in CRC patients. In the current study, we sought to elucidate IMP1-mediated functions in CRC pathogenesis in vivo. Using CRC cell xenografts, we demonstrate that IMP1 overexpression promotes xenograft tumor growth and dissemination into the blood. Furthermore, intestine-specific knockdown of Imp1 dramatically reduces tumor number in the Apc (Min/+) mouse model of intestinal tumorigenesis. In addition, IMP1 knockdown xenografts exhibit a reduced number of tumor cells entering the circulation, suggesting that IMP1 may directly modulate this early metastatic event. We further demonstrate that IMP1 overexpression decreases E-cadherin expression, promotes survival of single tumor cell-derived colonospheres and promotes enrichment and maintenance of a population of CD24+CD44+ cells, signifying that IMP1 overexpressing cells display evidence of loss of epithelial identity and enhancement of a tumor-initiating cell phenotype. Taken together, these findings implicate IMP1 as a modulator of tumor growth and provide evidence for a novel role of IMP1 in early events in CRC metastasis.