Company: VERA
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-029969
Chunk: 200

Company: Vera Therapeutics, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 200
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, confidentiality procedures, and employee disclosure and invention assignment agreements. Our intellectual property is critical to our business and we strive to protect it through a variety of approaches, including by obtaining and maintaining patent protection in the United States and internationally for our product candidate, and other inventions that are important to our business. For our product candidates, we generally intend to pursue patent protection covering compositions of matter, including new formulations, methods of making and methods of use. As we continue the development of our product candidates, we intend to identify additional means of obtaining patent protection that would potentially enhance commercial success, including through claims covering additional methods of use.

As of December 31, 2024, we have licensed, including pursuant to sublicenses, from Ares, an affiliate of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, a patent portfolio related to atacicept that contains approximately six issued U.S. patents, as well as certain foreign counterparts of a subset of these patents in foreign countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Israel, India, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, South Africa, and countries within the European Patent Convention and the Eurasian Patent Organization. The issued patents include claims covering methods of purifying atacicept, formulations and various methods of treatment, and are expected to expire between 2027 and 2029, without considering any patent term extension.

There is also a pending U.S. application as well as certain foreign counterparts directed to treatment of IgAN and proteinuria. The 20-year expiration date for patents that issue in this family is expected to be in 2041. 

Because atacicept is a biologic, marketing approval would also provide 12 years of market exclusivity from the approval date of a BLA in the United States. We are currently seeking orphan drug designation for atacicept in IgAN from the FDA and EMA, which, if secured, would provide seven and ten years, in the United States and European Union (EU), respectively, of regulatory exclusivity protection from the approval date.

As of December 31, 2024, our patent portfolio licensed from Novartis and covering MAU868 includes three issued U.S. patents with claims covering the composition of matter of MAU868, and methods of neutralizing BKV or JC virus as well as methods of treating or reducing the likelihood of BKV or JC virus associated disorders. Corresponding foreign counterparts are granted in countries within the European Patent Convention, Australia, China,