Martha Cassidy, Ph.D.

Counsel - Registered Patent Attorney

Martha Cassidy brings another Ph.D. to our team. With undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemistry and neurosciences, respectively, she has a strong background in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals which she will apply to drafting and prosecuting patent applications. Her research and clinical experience includes: as a laboratory technician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying new methods for testing blood clot formation on prospective synthetic polymer materials for manufacture of medical devices, jointly with the Biology and Materials Science departments while taking coursework in immunology at the Institute; and, performing stat chemical testing of medical samples in a pediatric intensive care setting at Children’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. The subject of her doctoral dissertation was the catabolism of extracellular N-acetylaspartylglutamate (NAAG), a brain peptide, with unknown function even today. Her work showed that an extracellular peptidase, located on the plasma membrane of both neurons and glia, cleaved the dipeptide to release glutamate, thus proving that NAAG fulfilled another criterion for acceptance as a neurotransmitter. This paved the way for further studies investigating the potential role for NAAG as a pro-transmitter for excitatory transmission and as a regulator of extracellular glutamate concentration in the nervous system. Martha has almost two decades in patent law including work on due diligence, drafting freedom to operate and validity opinions, interferences and litigation. She gained extensive experience in major pharmaceutical infringement litigation (Hatch-Waxman), patent and literature searches and legal opinions in the patentability, validity, infringement and freedom-to-operate arenas, as well as patent prosecution in the fields of biology, medicine and chemistry. Martha has experience in drafting and prosecuting patents in the fields of proteins and peptides, cells and animals, biotechnology, biochips, antibodies and vaccines, medical diagnostics and treatments, pharmaceuticals and chemical compounds, medical devices and instrumentation, rubber and polymer chemistry, and chemical engineering.

Practice Areas

  • Patents