DETAILED ACTION
All rejections and objections not mentioned below have been withdrawn.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 09/26/2025 has been entered.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for priority. The certified copy has been filed in parent Application No. 63/048,169, filed on 7/5/2020.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 01/03/2023 is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 11-12 and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being clearly anticipated by Hou (Hou, Ming-Hon, Hsu, Chai-Ning, Protein Science, (DEC 2017) Vol. 26, No. Suppl. 1, Sp. Iss. SI, pp. 196).
The reference Hou teaches(abstract):
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This anticipates claims 11-12 and claim 18.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 11-16 and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hou (Hou, Ming-Hon, Hsu, Chai-Ning, Protein Science, (DEC 2017) Vol. 26, No. Suppl. 1, Sp. Iss. SI, pp. 196) in view of Papageorgiou (Papageorgiou et al., Structural characterization of the N-terminal part of the MERS-CoV nucleocapsid by X-ray diffraction and small-angle X-ray scattering. Acta Cryst. (2016). D72, 192–202).
The reference Hou teaches(abstract):
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This helps to teach claims 11-16 and 18.
The reference Hou does not teach the detecting a hydrophobic contacts between the compound and the hydrophobic pocket of a dimeric interface of the N-NTDs (claims 13-16).
The reference Papageorgiou teaches “Recently, an inhibitor of the RNA–N interaction has been demonstrated to have an antiviral effect on HCoV-OC43 (Lin et al., 2014). The coronavirus N protein is thus an attractive target for antiviral research. Because of the world wide spread of MERS-CoV, with potential risks for healthcare, it is important to accumulate structural and functional information on MERS-CoV proteins in order to provide tools for antiviral development. In this study, we present the three-dimensional structure of the MERS-CoV NTD with its upstream IDR region (hereafter referred to as NTD+) at a resolution of 2.4 A ˚ obtained by X-ray diffraction measurements as well as a small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) study of the protein in solution in order to assess the oligomerization state of MERS-CoV NTD+, and propose a structural model of NTD+ including its disordered region” (pages 193-194) and “Analyses of the molecular arrangement within the crystal show stacking of Pro33 in front of the Trp43 residue belonging to the nearby molecule. The same stacking is also found within the crystal packing of the IBV NTD structure as presented in Fig. 5. In these figures hydrophobic residues (Val, Ile, Leu, Phe, Trp, Cys, Ala, Tyr, His, Thr, Ser, Gly and Lys) following the classification of Livingstone & Barton (1993) are labelled in green and highlight the conserved hydrophobic propensity of the core domain”(page 196-197). The reference also teaches “In addition to these interactions, the conserved hydrophobic core domain could interact with bases of the RNA through several aromatic residues (Huang et al., 2004; McBride et al., 2014; Spencer & Hiscox, 2006)”(page 200) and the figures 5 and 1 shown below. This help to teach claims 13-16.
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It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant invention to have modified Hou with Papageorgiou to achieve the instant invention because both references discuss coronavirus N protein as an attractive target for antiviral research and both discuss researching the crystal structure of the NTD region for a better understanding of structure function relation to treat the virus. One would be motivated to study the crystal structure of the docked compounds according to Hou and one would be motivated to target the hydrophobic pocket and its interaction with the target compounds because Papageorgiou teaches a hydrophobic core including Trp43 that interacts with other molecules of itself and it is part of the RNA binding NTD region. Thus if one is targeting the NTD dimerization domain one would have a reasonable expectation of success of interactions with the hydrophobic core and Trp43.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 17 is objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s declaration, see 1-2, filed 12/29/2025, with respect to inventor name spelling has been fully considered and is persuasive. The rejection of claims 11-18 due to Lin (Shan-Meng Lin et al., Journal of Medicinal Chemistry 2020 63 (6), 3131-3141, published 2/27/2020) has been withdrawn.
Conclusion
Claims 11-16 and 18 are rejected.
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/A.A.H./ Examiner, Art Unit 1627
/Kortney L. Klinkel/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 1627