Trolling the oceans for alguronic acid?

Note the article in the New York Times on 24 March 2011 titled Trolling the Oceans to Combat Aging which includes text:

Mrs. Slater [of Sephora] added that it made sense to her that alguronic acid (a compound that protects microalgae cells, according to Algenist’s maker, Solazyme) could also protect middle-aged faces from environmental assault. “Think about how algae can live anywhere, live in the coldest of places, or the harshest of places, and think about translating that to skin care,” she said. (...)
According to Jonathan Wolfson, the chief executive of Solazyme, the alternative-energy company that makes Algenist, the product came about after a fortuitous suggestion roughly six years ago by Arthur Grossman, a microalgae expert who’s now an adviser to the brand. At first, Solazyme executives had a good chuckle about the idea of getting into skin care, Mr. Wolfson said. “I really never thought I’d be standing in a store like this,” he told a gathering of reporters during a preview at Sephora Fifth Avenue, amid shiny display cases of primer and volumizing mascara.

Within the article, the New York Times managed to get into peer review and patent applications:

Studies conducted by an independent lab and commissioned by Algenist, none of which have been published in a peer-reviewed journal, showed alguronic acid increased cell regeneration and the synthesis of elastin (which gives skin that snap-back youthful quality). This testing also demonstrated that alguronic acid provided protection against cell damage induced by ultraviolet rays, and inhibited the enzymes that break down elastin.

After reviewing press materials and Solazyme’s 84-page patent application, Dr. David McDaniel, a dermatologist and the director of the Institute of Anti-Aging Research in Virginia Beach, Va., said he was impressed by the in-vitro testing of alguronic acid. “In the petri dish, their data seems to show some substantial benefits to their active ingredient,” he said. But he cautioned that in-vitro testing does not demonstrate how a final formulation works off the shelf.

IPBiz already discussed Solazyme's published US application 20090069213 [
Algae and the cosmetic business ] Note also US 20090274736, with inventors
including Harrison Dillon and Jonathan Wolfson and US 20070166266.

Note separately that US 20070166266 received a nonfinal rejection from the US Patent Office
on 13 Aug 2010. Previously, there had been an appeal brief filed on 4 June 2010, which brief
caused the USPTO to alter the rejections. In the current nonfinal rejection, the examiner did cite
to In re Best, 195 USPQ 430 and to In re Fitzgerald, 205 USPQ 594, to shift the burden of evidence
to the patent applicant. There is also a conditional double patenting rejection over application
11/932754.


Some papers by Arthur Grossman:

2009: Dubini Alexandra; Mus Florence; Seibert Michael; Grossman Arthur R; Posewitz Matthew C
Flexibility in anaerobic metabolism as revealed in a mutant of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii lacking hydrogenase activity.
The Journal of biological chemistry 2009;284(11):7201-13.

2008: Katherine R. M. Mackey, Adina Paytan, Arthur R. Grossman and Shaun Bailey
A photosynthetic strategy for coping in a high-light, low-nutrient environment
Limnol. Oceanogr., 53(3), 2008, 900–913

2007: Mus Florence; Dubini Alexandra; Seibert Michael; Posewitz Matthew C; Grossman Arthur R
Anaerobic acclimation in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii: anoxic gene expression, hydrogenase induction, and metabolic pathways.
The Journal of biological chemistry 2007;282(35):25475-86.

Separately in passing
J. P. Zehr, et al., Globally Distributed Uncultivated Oceanic N2-Fixing Cyanobacteria Lack Oxygenic Photosystem II, 322 Science 1110 (2008)

Some patent applications to Sapphire:

SALT TOLERANT ORGANISMS. PCT/US2010/048991

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED HERBICIDE RESISTANT ALGAE PCT/US2009/069216

NOVEL ACETYL CoA CARBOXYLASES PCT/US2010/048666