Sameshnee Pelly has vast experience in the drafting and prosecution of patent rights, both locally and internationally, particularly in the areas of small molecules, pharmaceuticals, and chemical syntheses. She holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a qualified South African Patent Attorney.
Before embarking on her career at Finnegan, Sameshnee managed the patent portfolio of Dr. Dennis Liotta at Emory University. His research group, most renowned for inventing the breakthrough HIV drug, EMTRIVA®, produces numerous new chemical entities in various therapeutic areas. Sameshnee handled their patentability searches and landscape studies, as well as the drafting and prosecuting of their numerous patent applications. Prior to this, she worked at a leading intellectual property firm in South Africa as an associate in the life sciences practice group. There she gained valuable experience in intellectual property enforcement, infringement, and patent prosecution in a number of jurisdictions around the world, including the United States, EPO, India, China, Japan, Australia, and Russia.
During her post graduate studies, Sameshnee achieved the first total synthesis of the naturally occurring dimeric naphtho-1,3-dimethyl pyran, cardinalin 3, found in the New Zealand toadstool Dermocybe cardinalis, ethanolic extracts of which exhibit significant cytotoxic activity against a murine leukaemia cell line. She also developed novel methods for creating building blocks of naturally occurring compounds using stereoselective additions, cross metatheses, and asymmetric allylic alkylations.
