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Rosetta Genomics, Ltd. (NASDAQ: ROSG) today announced that the Company received a grant from the European Patent Office for a patent claiming the use of miR-34a for the preparation of pharmaceuticals for treating p53-negative cancers. The issued claims cover a core element of Rosetta Genomics' microRNA technology in the development of cancer therapeutics associated with p53-negative cancers. The patent is jointly owned with Yeda, the technology transfer company of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel .
The p53 protein is a sequence-specific transcription factor that functions as a major tumor suppressor in mammals. Inactivation of the tumor-suppressor function of p53 is one of the most frequent genetic alterations in human cancer, and close to half of all human tumors carry p53 gene mutations within their cells. The invention covered by this new patent discloses the finding that miR-34a, which is a direct transcriptional target of p53, possesses anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic activities, thereby contributing to the tumor suppressor effects of activated p53.
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