Rosetta Genomics Granted US. Patent Allowance for Use of Gene Expression Signature for Classification of Kidney Tumors

Rosetta Genomics Ltd. (NASDAQ:ROSG) today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted a patent allowance for patent application No. 14/168,981, relating to “Gene Expression Signature for Classification of Kidney Tumors.”
According to the company’s press release:

The allowed patent claims a method for distinguishing four different types of kidney cancer: oncocytoma, clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC), papillary RCC, and chromophobe RCC in a human subject with renal cancer, through the expression profile of 29 microRNAs, and particularly hsa-miR-139-5p, detected by real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).
This U.S. patent allowance complements the intellectual property protection for Rosetta’s kidney cancer test, which is covered in U.S. patent 9,068,232, granted in July of 2015. The patent is owned jointly with Tel Hashomer Medical Research Ltd., the technology transfer company of the Chaim Sheba Medical Center in Israel.

 
Kenneth A. Berlin, President and Chief Executive Officer of Rosetta Genomic stated:

This patent allowance expands our leading intellectual property position in microRNA technology, and further protects our mi-KIDNEY™ sub-classification assay,” noted Kenneth A. Berlin, President and Chief Executive Officer of Rosetta Genomics. “Kidney cancer is among the 10 most common cancers in both men and women with approximately 61,000 new cases of primary kidney tumors and 14,000 deaths per year in the U.S. Unfortunately the incidence of primary kidney tumors is rising and so is the number of biopsies, yet differential diagnosis between various types of kidney tumors has been challenging. We are encouraged by the potential for this assay as recent studies have shown that as many as 20% to 25% of kidney tumors following nephrectomy turn out to be benign oncocytomas. Improved diagnoses of oncocytomas might avoid unnecessary surgeries, which would represent an opportunity to reduce costs and avoid nephrectomy-related complications. Equally important is our assay’s ability to classify the more aggressive subtypes of kidney cancer in order for oncologists to provide optimal therapeutic management.

Click here to view the full press release.