Peter Fasse and Tissue Engineering

The Attorney

I grew up in a patent family. My father, who is now semi-retired, was a patent attorney for many years, and my brother now runs his practice. I earned my two undergraduate degrees at MIT, where I studied bioelectrical engineering and biology. I then worked for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as an examiner in the genetic engineering unit for six months, before starting law school at GW. I came to GW because it had the best and broadest program in patent law. When it came time to look for work, I asked my ex-supervisor at the USPTO for his recommendation on the top firms in the country that were doing biotechnology patent prosecution, and, among others, he recommended Fish & Richardson, where I have spent my entire career.

My practice at Fish & Richardson is very diverse. When I first joined the firm in 1987, I was one of only five associates, and so my practice covered all aspects of intellectual property, including litigation. Now, however, my practice consists of client counseling, opinion work, and patent prosecution, in various technical fields. About half my work is in biology, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, and the rest is in a wide variety of disciplines including physics, optics, polymers, and software. Many of my clients are universities and hospitals, whose research results in a wide range of diverse inventions for which they seek patent protection.

One of the more interesting patents I have been involved with is U.S. Patent No. 6,020,310 ("Method for assisting in differential diagnosis and treatment of autistic syndromes"), which covers methods of treating autism using secretin, a naturally occurring hormone used to test pancreatic and other gastrointestinal function. The primary inventor of the method is not a scientist, but a woman named Victoria Beck from New Hampshire, who is the mother of a then four-year-old autistic child who had received secretin as part of a diagnostic test at the University of Maryland. When her son, who had been uncommunicative for years, started to talk within a few days after the test and to show other signs of improvement, she returned to the doctor who had administered the secretin and encouraged him to look for a connection between the secretin and her son’s behavior. Although the doctor was initially dismissive, the University of Maryland eventually filed a patent on the method without consulting Ms. Beck. After further discussions, the university finally added Ms. Beck as a co-inventor of the application. When my client Repligen, Inc., a New England biotech company, acquired the rights to the patent, we took over the prosecution and successfully obtained the ’310 patent.

The next area in which I want to get involved is nanotechnology (the branch of science that deals with things on the nanometer level, such as molecular manipulation). There is a lot of hype in this area right now, but at present, there are few commercial nanotech applications. It will take many years to develop a steady stream of nanotech products, and in that sense, I believe that the nanotech industry is similar to the nascent biotech industry twenty years ago. Because commercialization of today’s nanotechnology inventions is years away, it is important for researchers to pursue patents to obtain long-term protection.

The Invention

One of the Vacantis’ significant U.S. patents is U.S. Patent No. 6,171,610 (the ’610 patent), which covers methods of treating spinal cord injuries in patients. In their experiments, the Vacanti brothers removed a portion of spinal cord from a rat’s spine, ensuring that the cord could not reconnect on its own. They then created a tubular mold of fibers that they injected with a hydrogel containing the rat’s own stem cells and inserted the mold into the gap in the rat’s spinal cord. The cells then regenerated, creating a healthy spinal cord. When I visited the lab, the initial results were amazing: the control rats were dragging their hind limbs behind them — curled and totally useless — while the rats that survived the surgery could actually walk and reach food and water on their hind legs. The Vacantis had used hydrogels to make other artificial tissues, and had high hopes that it would work for the spinal column, but they were quite surprised that they achieved these kinds of results in their first tests. The hope is that the technique can be used to treat spinal cord injuries in humans by removing damaged spinal cord cells, taking cells from a healthy portion of the cord, mixing those cells into the hydrogel, and regenerating healthy tissue.

The patent has received considerable attention since it issued in January 2001, and IP Worldwide included it in its 2002 list of "Ten Patents that Changed the World". I am proud to have been involved with the drafting and prosecution of this patent.

The Inventors

The University of Massachusetts (UMass) has been a client of my firm for many years. When I was a third-year associate, UMass developed a greater interest in intellectual property and began filing more patent applications. I began to work on these cases, and so I was in the right place at the right time. Some of UMass’s more prolific inventors include the Vacanti brothers, who are pioneers in the field of tissue engineering. The Vacantis are responsible for, among other things, the now famous mouse with an engineered human ear attached to its back. One of their goals is to create replacement body parts from a patient’s own cells to avoid the chance of tissue rejection.