E-Therapeutics (LON:ETX), the drug discovery and development company, has been granted a further wide-ranging patent in the US covering its ground-breaking network pharmacology platform.
This builds on previous awards and the firm now says it has a broad set of key controlling patents for network pharmacology techniques in the US.
The latest patent has an effective priority date in 2002, reflecting the longstanding, pioneering work by e-Therapeutics, which began almost ten years ago.
The company now has controlling patents in force over wide applications of network analysis for identifying targets, drug interactions and combination effects in biomedicine.
Professor Malcolm Young, chief executive, said:"The grant of this wide-ranging patent is another key milestone for the company and brings significant benefit to e-Therapeutics.
Network pharmacology is one of very few growth areas within the internal research programmes of major pharmaceutical companies.
"In addition to confirming e-Therapeutics' novel science, the strength of our IP-backed position - coupled with the most extensive experience in this area - means that we can look forward with confidence to creating value for our partners and shareholders from the growth of network pharmacology activity worldwide."
Network pharmacology is a pioneering new technique that the group is using to develop a batch of drug candidates including treatments for asthma and arthrosclerosis.
The technology is able to find new uses for already existing products and it is hoped it will be licensed out to big pharma companies to aid their search for new drug candidates.