Yang Kun, Deangelis Robert A, Reed Janet E, Ricklin Daniel, Lambris John D
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 401A Stellar-Chance Building, 422 Curie Blvd, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2013;735:301-313. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4614-4118-2_21.
Complement is an essential part of the innate immune response. It interacts with diverse endogenous pathways and contributes to the maintenance of homeostasis, the modulation of adaptive immune responses, and the development of various pathologies. The potential usefulness, in both research and clinical settings, of compounds that detect or modulate complement activity has resulted in thousands of publications on complement-related innovations in fields such as drug discovery, disease diagnosis and treatment, and immunoassays, among others. This study highlights the distribution and publication trends of patents related to the complement system that were granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office from 1976 to the present day. A comparison to complement-related documents published by the World Intellectual Property Organization is also included. Statistical analyses revealed increasing diversity in complement-related research interests over time. More than half of the patents were found to focus on the discovery of inhibitors; interest in various inhibitor classes exhibited a remarkable transformation from chemical compounds early on to proteins and antibodies in more recent years. Among clinical applications, complement proteins and their modulators have been extensively patented for the diagnosis and treatment of eye diseases (especially age-related macular degeneration), graft rejection, cancer, sepsis, and a variety of other inflammatory and immune diseases. All of the patents discussed in this chapter, as well as those from other databases, are available from our newly constructed complement patent database: www.innateimmunity.us/patent .
补体是先天性免疫反应的重要组成部分。它与多种内源性途径相互作用，有助于维持体内平衡、调节适应性免疫反应以及引发各种病理状况。在研究和临床环境中，能够检测或调节补体活性的化合物具有潜在用途，这导致在药物发现、疾病诊断与治疗以及免疫测定等领域发表了数千篇关于补体相关创新的文献。本研究着重介绍了美国专利商标局自1976年至今授予的与补体系统相关专利的分布情况和发表趋势。同时还与世界知识产权组织公布的补体相关文件进行了比较。统计分析表明，随着时间的推移，补体相关研究兴趣的多样性不断增加。发现超过半数的专利聚焦于抑制剂的发现；对各类抑制剂的兴趣呈现出显著变化，从早期的化合物逐渐转变为近年来的蛋白质和抗体。在临床应用方面，补体蛋白及其调节剂已在眼部疾病（尤其是年龄相关性黄斑变性）、移植排斥、癌症、败血症以及多种其他炎症和免疫疾病的诊断和治疗方面获得了广泛的专利。本章讨论的所有专利以及其他数据库中的专利均可从我们新构建的补体专利数据库获取：www.innateimmunity.us/patent 。
