Genome editing tech patent application 'withdrawn': IP office

China's intellectual property authority said it considers as withdrawn the genome editing technology patent application of researchers from Hebei University of Science and Technology (HUST) and Zhejiang University since they failed to reply to a notice on time.

According to the State Intellectual Property Office, since researchers Han Chunyu and Shen Xiao did not reply, the patent application for the genome editing technology NgAgo is considered to have been withdrawn, thepaper.cn reported Wednesday.

Zheng Haifeng, the patent's proxy, said that Han and Shen were aware of the withdrawal and they might have other "strategies in this case," thepaper.cn reported.

According to the Rules for the Implementation of the Patent Law, Han and Shen could submit a request to restore the application.

Han, 42, an associate professor at HUST, announced to discover how to use the bacterial enzyme NgAgo to replicate and edit DNA, and published his findings in the Nature Biotechnology, on May 2, 2016.

HUST said that NgAgo is the first Chinese-invented top-notch biotechnology, breaking the foreign monopoly on genome editing processes. The technology has extensive applications for agriculture and medicine, including in gene therapy for diseases like AIDS and hepatitis B.

Han's discovery was hailed in China after the publication of the findings, which some media said was worthy of a Nobel Prize.

However, many domestic and foreign biologists said they could not replicate the findings released in July 2016, along with 13 biologists from Peking University's School of Life Science. Other biologists from prestigious institutes such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences also said they cannot replicate Han's results, and called on Han to publicize his raw data in October 2016.