[Federal Register Volume 66, Number 199 (Monday, October 15, 2001)]
[Notices]
[Page 52430]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 01-25829]
[[Page 52430]]
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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
National Institutes of Health
Government-Owned Inventions; Availability for Licensing
AGENCY: National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service, DHHS.
ACTION: Notice.
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SUMMARY: The invention described below is owned by an agency of the
U.S. Government and is available for licensing in the U.S., in
accordance with 35 U.S.C. 207, to achieve expeditious commercialization
of results of federally-funded research and development. Foreign patent
applications are filed on selected inventions to extend market coverage
for companies and may also be available for licensing.
ADDRESSES: Licensing information and copies of the U.S. patent
application listed below may be obtained by contacting Catherine Joyce,
Ph.D., J.D., at the Office of Technology Transfer, National Institutes
of Health, 6011 Executive Boulevard, Suite 325, Rockville, Maryland
20852-3804; telephone: 301/496-7735 ext. 258; fax: 301/402-0220; e-
mail: [email protected]. A signed Confidential Disclosure Agreement
will be required to receive copies of the patent application.
Development of a Single Vector Containing cre Recombinase and Two
Functional lox Sites: Active cre Produced in Eukaryotic but not
Prokaryotic Systems,
Stan Kaczmarczyk, Jeffrey E. Green (NCI), DHHS Reference No. E-172-00/0
filed 04 Apr 2001
The bacterial recombinase cre will recombine lox sites within
bacteria. Since this will occur with extremely low levels of cre, it
has not been possible to place the cre gene within a vector which also
contains two lox recombination site and clone the construct in
bacteria. Therefore, in order to use cre-lox technology, the use of two
separate vectors has been required--one containing cre and another
containing the lox sites. The inventors have devised a strategy to
generate vectors that contain cre in a form which is not translated in
bacteria thereby allowing for the co-existence of two lox sites within
the same vector. Under these circumstances, the vector can be cloned
and grown in bacteria enabling experiments to be conducted in
eukaryotic cells using just one vector instead of two separate vectors.
This system provides a significant advantage in performing many types
of experiments.
In in vitro transfection experiments, only one vector needs to be
incorporated into a cell instead of two separate vectors. This
overcomes the inherent problem of trying to transfect two vectors into
one cell, where the relative ratios of the two vectors which enter the
cells can vary widely. Of even greater significance is the application
of this technology to transgenic animal work where the incorporation of
one vector into a line of transgenic animals is all that is required,
instead of the generation of two separate lines of transgenic animals
which then must be crossed to produce an animal which contains both
constructs. In addition, this technology can be applied to gene therapy
approaches in which the tissue-specific expression of a therapeutic
gene can be activated by cre contained within the same construct. The
technology allows generation of one vector which contains the cre-
variant and two lox sites enabling one to either switch the expression
of one gene to another gene and/or amplify the expression of a
particular gene to high levels in a tissue specific manner.
This research has appeared, in part, in Kaczmarczyk and Green,
Nucleic Acids Res 2001 Jun 15;29(12):E56.
Dated: September 28, 2001.
Jack Spiegel,
Director, Division of Technology Development and Transfer, Office of
Technology Transfer, National Institutes of Health.
[FR Doc. 01-25829 Filed 10-12-01; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4140-01-P