Posts Tagged: "St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital"

Scott Elmer, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital On the ‘Sea Change’ in Diagnostics Patent Strategies

Scott Elmer is Director, Office of Technology Licensing, at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, one of the leading pediatric cancer hospitals in the country. The institution is focused on treatment of and research on children’s catastrophic diseases, particularly leukemia and other cancers. The hospital costs about $2.8 million a day to run and is 100% free to patients. St. Jude and more than 46 of its staff have been the recipients of prestigious awards and achievements, including the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which went to St. Jude faculty member, Peter C. Doherty. Recently, Elmer read Sherry Knowles’ John Marshall Intellectual Property Law Review article, Unconstitutional Application of 35 U.S.C. §101 by the U.S. Supreme Court and was inspired to write her in support of her argument that the Supreme Court’s misreading of the patent statute is causing real harm to inventors and industry on the ground. “I reached out to Sherry because I thought her article was well written and took a different approach to something that’s been a concern for a long time,” Elmer told IPWatchdog. “Sherry made the point that the Supreme Court’s more recent patent eligibility decisions have failed to recognize the patent statute’s reference to the term ‘discovery’ as a basis for the generation of patent-eligible subject matter, which particularly impacts diagnostics.”

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Gets Patent for Genetically Modified Human Immune Cells for Cancer Therapy

As the patent community waits to see whether the United States Supreme Court will deal a significant, perhaps fatal blow, to the patenting of many genetic related innovations in Association of Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, announcement came this morning of a newly issued U.S. patent. This patent was issued to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The invention relates to compositions for genetically modifying human immune cells so they can destroy some of the most common forms of cancer in children and adults.