Poh K. Teng, PhD

Bringing expertise in a wide range of life science technologies

Poh K. Teng, PhD, focuses her practice on US and International patent preparation, prosecution, and client counseling. Poh has 14 years of scientific research expertise in basic and applied biological research, including protein structure and function, strain and pathway engineering, amyloid diseases, cancer biology, and infectious disease. Poh’s broad technical expertise serves as the foundation for her IP practice in a variety of life science technologies.

Prior to joining McNeill Baur PLLC, Poh was a Patent Agent at Lygos, Inc. where she prepared patent and grant applications relating to strain and pathway engineering to produce high‐value chemicals from low‐cost biobased feedstocks. Poh also worked previously as a Patent Portfolio Manager at Solar Junction Corp. where she prepared patent applications relating to space solar cells. At these innovative technology startups, Poh worked in close collaboration with biology, chemistry, engineering, and legal teams to strategically protect platform technologies and pipeline products.

For her postdoctoral work at the UC Berkeley Energy Biosciences Institute, Poh studied microbial carbon fixation as the foundation for next‐generation carbon capture and biofuel production. For her doctoral work at UCLA, she studied the structure and function of amyloid proteins to inform the design of new therapeutics for amyloid diseases.

Select Publications

“Identification of a minimal peptide tag for in vivo and in vitro loading of encapsulin,” Biochemistry, May 25, 2016 (coauthor).

“Programmed ribosomal frameshifting mediates expression of the α‐carboxysome,” J Mol Biol, January 16, 2016 (coauthor).

“Toxic fibrillar oligomers of amyloid‐β have cross‐β structure,” Proc Natl Acad Sci USA,
May 15, 2012 (coauthor).

“Atomic view of a toxic amyloid small oligomer,” Science, March 9, 2012 (coauthor).

“Modularity of a carbon‐fixing protein organelle,” Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, January 10, 2012
(coauthor).

“Ribonuclease A suggests how proteins self‐chaperone against amyloid fiber formation,”
Protein Sci, November 16, 2011 (coauthor).

“Identifying the amylome, proteins capable of forming amyloid‐like fibrils,” Proc Natl Acad Sci
USA, February 23, 2010 (coauthor).

“Short protein segments can drive a non‐fibrillizing protein into the amyloid state,” Protein Eng
Des Sel, July 14, 2009 (coauthor).

“A novel CYR61‐triggered 'CYR61‐avb3 integrin loop' regulates breast cancer cell survival and
chemosensitivity through activation of ERK1/ERK2 MAPK signaling pathway,” Oncogene,
December 13, 2004 (coauthor).

“Pharmacological inhibition of fatty acid synthase (FAS): a novel therapeutic approach for
breast cancer chemoprevention through its ability to suppress Her‐2/neu (erbB‐2) oncogeneinduced
malignant transformation,” Mol Carcinog, September 23, 2004 (coauthor).