Grant Shoebridge PhD

Grant is a Principal with almost a decade of experience in pharmaceutical and biotechnology-related intellectual property. He specialises in drafting,  prosecution and opposition matters relating to molecular biology, cell biology, immunology, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, agricultural technology, and diagnostic technology. Grant also has particular expertise in securing extensions of term on pharmaceutical patents, advising on patent validity and infringement, and Federal Court litigation matters.

Grant has almost 20 years’ experience working as a research scientist. During his honours year at Macquarie University, Grant worked in a developmental biology laboratory as well as characterising chlorophyll-light harvesting complexes in a variety of different plants. After receiving his honours degree, Grant worked in the Clinical Immunology Department of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital where he successfully developed a novel HIV diagnostic assay. Grant then moved to London and was employed in the Neuroscience Department of the Institute of Psychiatry investigating Alzheimer’s disease.

Following his return to Australia, Grant joined the Immunology Unit, University of Technology, Sydney and obtained a PhD, which considered the structural basis of antibody polyreactivity. Grant subsequently worked as a postdoctoral scientist at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, investigating metastasis of breast cancer. He was then employed in the Institut de Biochimie, Lausanne Switzerland, where he investigated Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) variants and their use in FRET-based  high throughput cellular diagnostic assays.

When Grant returned to Australia he worked as a National Health and Medical Research Centre Senior Research Officer at the Centenary Institute of Cancer Medicine and Cell Biology (Sydney) on the development of a DNA vaccine against tuberculosis.

Grant’s transition from medical research to intellectual property involved working at Apollo Life Sciences, a Sydney biotechnology start-up company, where he drafted patent applications directed to a range of life science inventions including human cell expressed cytokines, treatments of ageing and immune system disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis and chronic viral infections such as hepatitis C as well as nanoparticle-based cellular delivery systems.

Grant has also been a lecturer and course coordinator for “Interpretation and Validity of Patent Specifications” which is part of  the University of Technology, Sydney postgraduate law program, and the Masters in Intellectual Property, which provides a pathway to registration for Australian patent attorneys. Grant is also a lecturer for the University of NSW course “ Myths and Realities of Personalised Medicine: The Genetic Revolution”.

Grant is passionate about intellectual property and the crucial role it plays in bringing  innovation from the laboratory to the public in the form of new medicines, treatments and diagnostics.

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy (Molecular Immunology), University of Technology Sydney
• Master of Industrial Property, University of Technology Sydney
• Bachelor of Science (Molecular and Cell Biology) (Honours), Macquarie University
• Registered Patent Attorney (Australia & New Zealand)
• Registered Trade Mark Attorney (Australia).

Associations

• Fellow, Institute of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys of Australia
• Intellectual Property Society of Australia and New Zealand
• Australian Biotechnology Association (AusBiotech).