Posts Tagged: "duke university"

Social policy concerns have influenced the AMP v Myriad debate. The Supreme Court, to the extent it must make a ruling for our times, informed by societal context, should dispassionately consider all the available empirical evidence, from the academic work cited here, to the claim scope limits resulting from massive sequence publication projects and recent court cases, and the thriving innovation ecosystem in personalized medicine at and among for profit and not for profits, and render a clear forward compatible decision for us all.

Like so many other popular science fiction books, movies and franchises, Star Trek has inspired many innovators to ask the question “why not?” Although Star Trek did not have a monopoly on inspiration for cloaking devices, a technology that was first awarded a U.S. patent earlier this year, it is hard to imagine a more powerful motivation for the pursuit of deflector shields. And earlier today the company that owns the first patented cloaking device claims to have successfully created a deflector shield body armor suit.

The conjugates covered by this patent could enable less frequent and better tolerated dosing of one of the most widely used treatments worldwide for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, interferon-beta-1b. The invention described in the European Patent relates to methods for the preparation of conjugates of poly(ethylene glycol), and derivatives thereof, with interferon-beta-1b. Compared to the corresponding unconjugated bioactive components, the conjugates of the invention have increased stability (i.e., longer shelf life and longer half-lives in vivo). In addition, compared to conjugates of the same bioactive component prepared with polymer chains that are attached randomly to solvent-accessible sites along the polypeptide chains, the conjugates of the invention have increased receptor-binding activity and increased potency.

Carrier goes on to detail the comprehensive research of Professor John Walsh who in 2007 surveyed 1125 biomedical researchers in universities, government labs and nonprofit institutions. Walsh received 414 responses and the responses were overwhelmingly clear. Carrier explains that only 3% of respondents indicated that they stopped pursuit of a research agenda based on an excess of patents present in the space. Furthermore, Carrier explained that a mere 5% of respondents even regularly checked for patents related to their research and “no respondents reported that they had abandoned a line of research because of a patent.”

There are few things in this world that irritate me more than hypocrisy. Did you know that since 1976 Duke University has had 716 issued US patents, 266 of which in some way, shape or form relate to genetics and 156 of which relate in some way, shape or form relate to both genetics AND cancer. While Duke University throws Myriad Genetics under the bus over its patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes tied to breast and ovarian cancer, Duke has its own patent on identification and sequencing of the BRCA2 cancer susceptibility gene. How convenient!

Last week, on Thursday, April 15, 2010, while many individuals were scrambling at the last minute to file income tax returns in the US, Duke University released a study that, not surprisingly, says patents block competition. WOW! Thank you so much for clearing that up Duke! What would we have ever done without the learned elite at Duke University telling us that patents block competition. Seriously… what was your first clue? For goodness sakes I hope you didn’t take much time or energy coming to that conclusion, given that is exactly what patents are supposed to do. You see, they provide exclusive rights, which means the owner of the right has the ability to exclude. So let’s all breath a sigh of relief that the money spent on an academic study actually reached a conclusion that is true and accurate. Now, if the conclusions drawn from the study were only as commonsensical as the discovery of patents conveying exclusive rights.