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Yvonne Shyntum, J.D., Ph.D.'s headshot Yvonne Shyntum, J.D., Ph.D.'s headshot
Partner

Yvonne Shyntum, J.D., Ph.D.

Biography

Yvonne Shyntum, J.D., Ph.D., serves as a Partner in the areas of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

Yvonne manages patent portfolios across the full prosecution lifecycle, from drafting and filing U.S. patent applications through responses, amendments, and office action strategy to allowance. Her practice also includes representing clients before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in appeals, both for matters she has prosecuted herself and for matters originally handled by other attorneys. In addition to prosecution, she drafts invalidity, freedom-to-operate, and non-infringement opinion letters and prosecutes trademark applications across industries beyond life sciences. To help clients pursue patent protection in foreign jurisdictions, she partners with a select group of attorneys around the globe.

Yvonne's practice throughout her career has centered on synthetic biology and pathway engineering. She has done extensive work on genetically engineering metabolic pathways, combining existing biological systems or building new ones to give organisms abilities they did not have before. This included roughly a decade of prosecuting applications related to engineering bacteria, and later plants, to manufacture polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) bioplastics. That work was later carried over into materials science, helping to develop biodegradable products now in commercial use. Yvonne‘ has also done extensive work biologics, including cell-therapy,  developing strategies to distinguish chemically induced cells from naturally occurring counterparts. A steady stream of drug-delivery work, focused on improving the pharmacokinetics of therapeutics, rounds out her practice.

Yvonne earned her Ph.D. in pharmacology before going to law school. She chose to become an attorney for the professional flexibility it offered beyond patent prosecution, such as opinion work, and trademark practice. Born in Cameroon, Yvonne studied in part in Nigeria before moving to the United States. She brings a global perspective to her practice and looks for every opportunity to travel and learn about the world by meeting people from different cultures, a practice she fondly calls the University of Life.