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 .
Status of Claims
Claims 1, 5-19, 21, 27, 30, and 57 are pending.
Priority
Claims 1, 5-19, 21, 27, 30, and 57 are a 371 of PCT/US 2022/050921 filed on November 23, 2022, which has priority to PRO 63/282,347 filed on November 23, 2021.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) (IDS) submitted on May 17, 2024, and on August 14, 2024, and on March 18, 2026, were filed before the mailing of the First Office Action on July 25, 2026. The Non-Patent Literature is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97 and are 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 30 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. §102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Page et al. [Engineering riboswitches in vivo using dual genetic selection and fluorescence-activated cell sorting, ACS Synthetic Biology, 2018].
Regarding claim 30, Page et al. teaches a method of generating a randomized aptamer library: providing a DNA sequence encoding a riboswitch aptamer [Library Construction and Plasmid Cloning] and modifying the DNA sequence encoding the riboswitch aptamer by introducing deletions, point mutations, and/or insertions or random nucleotides [Id.] to generate a library comprising a plurality of modified sequences [Id.].
Claims Free of the Art
Claims 1, 5-19, 21, 27, and 57 are free of the art. To that point, the closest prior art identified based on sequence similarity does not teach or suggest Applicant’s claimed nucleic acid sequences or their associated uses. For example, WO 2012 150598 A2 discloses SEQ ID NO: 8370 which exhibits a 92.4% sequence match to Applicant’s SEQ ID NO: 29. However, the sequence disclosed in the ‘598 application has a length of 711 nucleotides, whereas Applicant’s claimed sequence is only 64 nucleotides in length. Similarly, WO 2013 016694 A2 (Jaffrey) discloses a sequence having 100% match to Applicant’s SEQ ID NO: 33. However, the disclosed sequence has a length of 104 nucleotides compared to Applicant’s claimed sequence of 23 nucleotides. Another example is US 2006 0073161 A1 discloses a sequence having an 87.6% match to Applicant’s SEQ ID NO: 28. But again, the disclosed sequence is 1,248 nucleotides in length, whereas Applicant’s claimed sequence is only 28 nucleotides in length. Furthermore, the ‘161 application is directed to Bacteriodes fragilis proteins and vaccine compositions and would not have taught a person of ordinary skill in the art the claimed sequence based on the disclosure. Although additional prior art references were identified that contain sequences that exhibit partial or complete sequence identity to certain Applicant-provided SEQ ID NOs, the sequences that were disclosed were portions of substantially larger nucleic acid molecules or within unrelated technical fields.
Conclusion
Claims 1, 5-19, 21, 27, and 57 are allowed.
Claim 30 is rejected for being anticipated by Page et al.
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/JOHN DAVID MOORE/Examiner, Art Unit 1638
/Tracy Vivlemore/Supervisory Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1638
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