Patents by Inventor Ron Weiss

Ron Weiss has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Publication number: 20250135007
    Abstract: Disclosed herein are compositions comprising sterol-amino-phosphate compounds and methods of making and use thereof. Also disclosed herein are methods of making and methods of use of the compounds, compositions, and/or lipid particles disclosed herein. For example, the compounds and compositions are useful for treating a disease or disorder in humans and in animals. In some examples, the subject is a human male and the disease or disorder comprises male infertility.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 20, 2022
    Publication date: May 1, 2025
    Inventors: Yizhou DONG, Shi DU, Wenqing LI, Yuebao ZHANG, Darrell IRVINE, Ron WEISS
  • Patent number: 12286646
    Abstract: The disclosure provides methods for an in vitro evolution technique to identify and characterize mutations in the non-structural genes of an alphavirus replicon that increase the strength and persistence of expression of the replicon genome. Also provided herein are in vivo methods for administering to an animal model a mutated alphavirus replicon that codes for a gene of experimental or therapeutic interest in the subgenome of the alphavirus replicon. The mutations identified herein improve the therapeutic potential of self-replicating RNA, which may have implications for cancer immunotherapy and beyond, e.g., for vaccination or gene therapy.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 10, 2020
    Date of Patent: April 29, 2025
    Assignee: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Darrell J. Irvine, Ron Weiss, Yingzhong Li
  • Patent number: 12209250
    Abstract: Provided herein are engineered HSV-1 vectors comprising a modified HSV-1 genome. The engineered HSV-1 vectors can be used to deliver genetic circuits (e.g., up to 100 kb) to cells in vitro or in vivo. Methods of treating or diagnosing a disease (e.g., cancer) using the engineered HSV-1 vectors described herein are also provided.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 14, 2020
    Date of Patent: January 28, 2025
    Assignee: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Ron Weiss, Maria Hottelet Foley, Jin Huh, Ross D. Jones
  • Patent number: 12203069
    Abstract: The present disclosure is related to an engineered nucleic acid encoding a post-poly A signal RNA 3? to a terminator for expression of protein, and/or non-coding RNA. Also provided herein are methods for reducing epigenetic silencing, genetic modification, transcriptional regulation of the engineered nucleic acid described herein.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 15, 2020
    Date of Patent: January 21, 2025
    Assignee: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Ron Weiss, James J. Collins, Elvira Vitu, Casper Enghuus, Jeremy Jonathan Gam
  • Patent number: 12139721
    Abstract: Genetic circuits have been developed to regulate behaviors of replicon RNA in responses to small molecules, which has broader applications, such as for quantitative expression of cargo genes, temporary expression of immunomodulatory cytokines or antigens for better cancer immunotherapy or vaccination, and for increased safety in use of self-replicating vectors or in combination with other viral-delivery vectors. Described herein are genetic circuits suitable for systems that either require a tight off state or a slow off state, which can serve for instance where either a kill switch or prolonged protein expression (e.g., of vaccine antigens) are needed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 15, 2021
    Date of Patent: November 12, 2024
    Assignee: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Darrell J. Irvine, Ron Weiss, Yingzhong Li, Jan Lonzaric, Parisa Yousefpour
  • Patent number: 12098366
    Abstract: Disclosed herein is a subgenomic promoter library derived from alphavirus. Also provided herein are methods of using the subgenomic promoters to produce antibodies and other molecules.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 7, 2020
    Date of Patent: September 24, 2024
    Assignee: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Ron Weiss, Jin Huh
  • Patent number: 12032920
    Abstract: The present disclosure provides systems and methods that train and use machine-learned models such as, for example, sequence-to-sequence models, to perform direct and text-free speech-to-speech translation. In particular, aspects of the present disclosure provide an attention-based sequence-to-sequence neural network which can directly translate speech from one language into speech in another language, without relying on an intermediate text representation.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 7, 2020
    Date of Patent: July 9, 2024
    Assignee: GOOGLE LLC
    Inventors: Ye Jia, Zhifeng Chen, Yonghui Wu, Melvin Johnson, Fadi Biadsy, Ron Weiss, Wolfgang Macherey
  • Publication number: 20240141324
    Abstract: The present disclosure, at least in part, provides RNA cleavage based engineered bi-stable toggle switch utilizing the Programmable Endonucleolytic Scission-Induced Stability Tuning (PERSIST) platform. Also provided herein, are vectors encoding the engineered bi-stable toggle switch, and uses thereof.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 1, 2023
    Publication date: May 2, 2024
    Applicant: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Ron Weiss, Breanna E. DiAndreth, Noreen Wauford
  • Patent number: 11969465
    Abstract: Disclosed herein are polynucleotides encoding multi-epitope polypeptides and assemblies thereof, and their use for treating or limiting Toxoplasma gondii infection.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 11, 2022
    Date of Patent: April 30, 2024
    Assignee: EMERGENT TRAVEL HEALTH INC.
    Inventors: Rima McLeod, Kamal El Bissati, Ying Zhou, Jeff Alexander, Steve Reed, Peter Burkhard, Mariane Melo, Darrel Irvine, Ron Weiss, Yuan Zhang
  • Patent number: 11964007
    Abstract: Compositions and methods are described for inducing an immune response against an immunogen in humans. The induced immune response is obtained by administering a heterologous prime-boost combination of an in vitro transcribed (IVT) self-replicating RNA (repRNA) and an adenovirus vector. The compositions and methods can be used to provide a protective immunity against a disease, such as a viral infection or a cancer, in humans.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 22, 2021
    Date of Patent: April 23, 2024
    Assignees: Janssen Vaccines & Prevention B.V., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Ronald Vogels, Marijn Van Der Neut Kolfschoten, Darrell J. Irvine, Ron Weiss, Ely Blanton Porter, Mariane Bandeira Melo, Tasuku Kitada
  • Publication number: 20240124877
    Abstract: Provided herein are genetic circuits and encoded RNA transcripts that produce an output molecule in response to an RNA cleavage event that removes a degradation signal. In some embodiments, the genetic circuits described herein may be used for detecting RNA cleaver activities (e.g., in a cell). Methods of using the genetic circuits described herein in diagnostic or therapeutic applications are also provided.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 14, 2023
    Publication date: April 18, 2024
    Applicant: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Ron Weiss, Breanna E. DiAndreth
  • Publication number: 20240024394
    Abstract: The present disclosure relates to synthetic oncolytic viruses comprising a lipid nanoparticle comprising one or more types of lipid and a self-amplifying replicon RNA comprising a sequence that encodes an immunomodulatory molecule.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 14, 2023
    Publication date: January 25, 2024
    Applicants: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ohio State Innovation Foundation
    Inventors: Darrell J. Irvine, Karl Dane Wittrup, Ron Weiss, Yingzhong Li, Noor Momin, Yizhou Dong
  • Publication number: 20240018528
    Abstract: Provided herein are feedback controller circuits and cell state classifiers for tunable phosphorylation-based transcriptional regulation of gene expression in cells based on intracellular miRNA profiles and degradation by small molecules. Also provided are methods of using feedback controller circuits and cell state classifiers for determining the cell state, and methods of treating cells and subjects using feedback controller circuits and cell state classifiers encoding therapeutic output molecules.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 2, 2021
    Publication date: January 18, 2024
    Applicant: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Ross D. Jones, Yili Qian, Domitilla Del Vecchio, Ron Weiss
  • Patent number: 11834659
    Abstract: The present disclosure, at least in part, relates to an engineered RNA (e.g., microRNA and sgRNA), in the absence of an input signal, that is engineered to have a large enough energy gap between the formations of a first secondary structure, which is unrecognizable by an actuator, and a second secondary structure, which is recognizable by an actuator (e.g., Drosha and Cas protein).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 25, 2020
    Date of Patent: December 5, 2023
    Assignee: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Ron Weiss, Giulio Alighieri
  • Patent number: 11795455
    Abstract: Provided herein are genetic circuits and encoded RNA transcripts that produce an output molecule in response to an RNA cleavage event that removes a degradation signal. In some embodiments, the genetic circuits described herein may be used for detecting RNA cleaver activities (e.g., in a cell). Methods of using the genetic circuits described herein in diagnostic or therapeutic applications are also provided.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 30, 2018
    Date of Patent: October 24, 2023
    Assignee: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Ron Weiss, Breanna E. DiAndreth
  • Patent number: 11756534
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for neural network adaptive beamforming for multichannel speech recognition are disclosed. In one aspect, a method includes the actions of receiving a first channel of audio data corresponding to an utterance and a second channel of audio data corresponding to the utterance. The actions further include generating a first set of filter parameters for a first filter based on the first channel of audio data and the second channel of audio data and a second set of filter parameters for a second filter based on the first channel of audio data and the second channel of audio data. The actions further include generating a single combined channel of audio data. The actions further include inputting the audio data to a neural network. The actions further include providing a transcription for the utterance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 26, 2022
    Date of Patent: September 12, 2023
    Assignee: Google LLC
    Inventors: Bo Li, Ron Weiss, Michiel A. U. Bacchiani, Tara N. Sainath, Kevin William Wilson
  • Patent number: 11717548
    Abstract: The present disclosure relates to synthetic oncolytic viruses comprising a lipid nanoparticle comprising one or more types of lipid and a self-amplifying replicon RNA comprising a sequence that encodes an immunomodulatory molecule.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 10, 2020
    Date of Patent: August 8, 2023
    Assignees: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ohio State Innovation Foundation
    Inventors: Darrell J. Irvine, Karl Dane Wittrup, Ron Weiss, Yingzhong Li, Noor Momin, Yizhou Dong
  • Publication number: 20230235334
    Abstract: Provided herein are genetic circuits and cell state classifiers for detecting the microRNA profile of a cell. The cell state classifiers of the present disclosure utilize phosphorylation state of a transcription factor to control classifier output. Kinases and phosphatase pairs that function in phosphorylating or dephosphorylating the transcription factor are integrated into the circuit, their expression tuned by the presence of microRNAs of interest (e.g., in a cell). The genetic circuits and cell state classifiers may be used in various applications (e.g., therapeutic or diagnostic applications).
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 11, 2022
    Publication date: July 27, 2023
    Applicant: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Ron Weiss, Ross D. Jones, Jin Huh
  • Publication number: 20230186901
    Abstract: A method includes receiving a training example for a listen-attend-spell (LAS) decoder of a two-pass streaming neural network model and determining whether the training example corresponds to a supervised audio-text pair or an unpaired text sequence. When the training example corresponds to an unpaired text sequence, the method also includes determining a cross entropy loss based on a log probability associated with a context vector of the training example. The method also includes updating the LAS decoder and the context vector based on the determined cross entropy loss.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 10, 2023
    Publication date: June 15, 2023
    Applicant: Google LLC
    Inventors: Tara N. Sainath, Ruoming Pang, Ron Weiss, Yanzhang He, Chung-Cheng Chiu, Trevor Strohman
  • Publication number: 20230159948
    Abstract: The present disclosure, at least in part, relates to an engineered incoherent feed forward loop (iFFL) comprising a first transcription unit encoding an endoribonuclease and a second transcription unit encoding an output molecule and an endoribonuclease target site located in the 5? UTR of the output molecule coding sequence. The engineered iFFL, at least in part, can be used for sustained expression of an output molecule despite of transcription resource disturbance in a given environment.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 20, 2021
    Publication date: May 25, 2023
    Applicant: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Inventors: Ron Weiss, Ross D. Jones, Breanna E. DiAndreth, Domitilla Del Vecchio, Yili Qian