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Microbiome therapeutics and patent protection

Obtaining patent protection for microbiome therapeutics has been affected profoundly by the US Supreme Court decisions in Myriad and Mayo, which redefined the scope of which natural phenomena, including microbiome therapeutics, are patent eligible.

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Correspondence to Erik J. Spek.

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Competing interests

M.J.F. is a partner in the intellectual property group at Nixon Peabody LLP. E.J.S. is an employee of Vedanta Biosciences, Inc., a company developing therapies for diseases based on human microbiome-derived bacteria.

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FitzGerald, M.J., Spek, E.J. Microbiome therapeutics and patent protection. Nat Biotechnol 38, 806–810 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-0579-z

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