We believe it is important you fish in your own antibody “pond” when selecting therapeutic leads in order to avoid the possibility of inadvertently developing an antibody already selected by a competitor. The dangers of fishing in the same pond are briefly outlined in a tale of two patents.
In 1997 and 2003, well before the days of next generation sequencing, Genentech and Human Genome Sciences filed patents on identical antibodies against the same target selected from the same natural phage antibody library. An interference was decided in favor of Genentech that filed earlier. The widespread use of next generation sequencing has only exacerbated this problem.