US patent regarding Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia

I though this reference was rather interesting.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsrchnum.htm&Sect1=P...

United States Patent 6,630,507
Hampson , et al. October 7, 2003

Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants

Abstract

Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention. A particular disclosed class of cannabinoids useful as neuroprotective antioxidants is formula (I) wherein the R group is independently selected from the group consisting of H, CH.sub.3, and COCH.sub.3. ##STR1##


Please note who the "Assignee" is. The Assignee being the US government seemed odd until I checked to see who the inventors worked for.

Hampson; Aidan J. (Irvine, CA)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1471-4159.1998.70020671.x/abstra...

Author Information

1. 1

Departments of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, and
2. 2

Anesthesia, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

*Correspondence: Aidan J. Hampson,

*Correspondence: Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. A. J. Hampson at Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Regulation, NIMH, NIH, LCMR Bldg. 36A15, Convent Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, U.S.A.

Axelrod; Julius (Rockville, MD)
http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2006-A-Ec/Axelrod-Julius.html

Around 1957, he began the work that would later earn him the Nobel Prize

Grimaldi; Maurizio (Bethesda, MD)
http://www.southernresearch.org/research/grimaldi.html

During his scientific career Dr. Grimaldi conducted research at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the National Institute for Child and Human Development (NICHD), and the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) at the National Institutes for Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD. From 2000 to 2004, he was an assistant professor of neurology in the Department of Neurology, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda. He also consulted for drug companies and the National Institute for Deafness and Communicative Disorders (NIDCD).

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Three things I find to be most interesting things about the patent are: 1 the US government is the patent owner. 2 one of the inventors is a Nobel Prize winner. 3 all three of the inventors were NIH employees.

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