Large Hardon Collider

[Shiroikage]

Meteors are incredible to see. Last year when I was riding the bus home from a night class, I saw one. I thought someone had some badass fireworks. I didn't figure out what it was until my roommate told me about a meteor on the news.

[Woozie]

I just saw a video of this on the news. If I had witnessed these, I would have thought we were under attack or something. Those looked like freaking missiles exploding or something.

[Woozie]

For Shiro and Leroy, and anyone else who cares about genetics research

Case Studies Reveal that Patents Can Hinder Genetic Research and Patient Care

WHO OWNS YOU? More than 4,000 sequences from human genes, covering about 20 percent of the human genome, have been patented.

A U.S. District Court judge's recent decision to invalidate patents on two genes commonly tested to determine risk for breast and ovarian cancers is an important step toward removing legal hurdles that have slowed the development of new genetic testing technology, according to a team of Duke University researchers.

Although Judge Robert Sweet's March 31 ruling does not sit well with some biotech companies and universities, Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (IGSP) researchers say that broad patent claims such as those made by Myriad Genetics and the University of Utah Research Foundation do more to block competition and discourage promising new technologies than to spur innovation.

The researchers' conclusions come from a series of case studies initiated in 2007 to examine genetic risk testing for 10 clinical conditions, including breast and colon cancer, cystic fibrosis and hearing loss. In seven of these conditions, exclusive licenses were a source of controversy, according to the case study results, which were published April 14 in a special issue of Genetics in Medicine. However, in none of these cases was the holder of exclusive patent rights the first to market with a test.

Gene patents are granted primarily for one of two reasons, says Robert Cook-Deegan, director of the IGSP Center for Genome Ethics, Law & Policy. The first is as a way for a biotech or pharmaceutical company to protect the therapeutics—made with the help of genetic material—that go into the development of a new drug. The second is to protect the intellectual property of companies that make genetic diagnostic tools that determine a person's susceptibility to disease.

Myriad claimed that the work its technology does of isolating the DNA from the body transforms it and makes it patentable. The judge in this case, however, found that isolated copies are not that different from non-isolated DNA. "This implies that isolated DNA is a discovery and not an invention and therefore not patentable," says Mark Bünger, a research director at Lux Research Inc.

The biotech industry's stance has been that its work is expensive and important and needs to be licensed so that this work may continue. This argument has been successful for the most part until now—more than 4,000 sequences from human genes, covering about 20 percent of the human genome, have been patented.

IGSP's research suggests that although exclusive licenses have been valuable for developing drugs and biologics that might not otherwise be developed, in the context of gene testing, exclusive patent rights are primarily a tool for companies and research organizations to eliminate their competition, Cook-Deegan says. The problem is not with the patents themselves but rather when overly broad patents are exclusively licensed to a single company or university, he adds.

One of the IGSP's goals was to analyze patients with similar medical situations but who had different levels of testing capabilities available to them. The researchers' role was to gather information about how much different gene tests cost and how the technology is licensed, and to provide research on how patenting these tests might affect healthcare, Cook-Deegan says.

When Duke researchers studied Myriad's tests, designed to find mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2, they found Myriad's patent claims made it nearly impossible for patients to pursue alternative ways to test clinically for BRCA genes without that test infringing on Myriad's intellectual property.

The likelihood is that the health care industry will become more reliant on genetic material as time passes, but right now there are questions about whether performing genetics tests might get an organization sued, Cook-Deegan says, adding: "It would be quite a value to biotech to get some clarity on this."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...id=gene-patent

What are your opinion's on this? I don't understand exactly what's going on. How exactly does gene patenting work? If someone has a patent on the gene, it means I can't use genetic testing to see if I'm susceptible ( <-- no spell check at work, my bad) to a disease if it uses that gene? It sounds like it also places limits on how much researchers can use the gene in the production of treatments and medicines? This sounds like a lose - lose situation here. Medical companies patent all sorts of stuff they can't or don't intend to use. This is rediculous that companies are just patenting huge parts of the human genome (1/5th if it being patented so far).

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what exactly is going on here. If so, can someone explain it better?

And by the way, out of curiosity, exactly what type of research do you plan on doing, Leroy and Shiro (and Tristam, if you're still reading this thread. I don't even know what field you're in).

[Chun Liroy]

Yeah I heard about it on the Colbert Report last night actually lol. I'm not sure if I'm interpreting it right, but I think what was happening is scientists would find a portion of the genome and patent that. Then whenever a researcher uses that gene to create a drug it would cost that person money to use it. Like for example, in gene therapy say you use gene 13 in your work and develop a... cure for CF, you must give some money towards the discoverer of the gene. At least that's how I think that the patents are working. By not allowing the discoveries to be patented, it's effectively eliminating a point of revenue for the research scientists. So even if they do make a discovery they don't make any money off it even though it was very expensive to find that gene, then they can't continue doing more research.

Edit: I'm sure shiro can offer more clarity on the subject.

I'm only a freshman in College Woozie, but I intend on doing Cancer/Viral/genetic research.

[Woozie]

I guess that sort of makes sense, but a lot of the research physicist do requires hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment (high powered lasers, supercomputers, etc) and we do the research without an expectation of any revenue or profit whatsoever. Maybe genetic research is signifcantly more expensive than this, I don't know. But it still seems like a bad idea to inhibit the ability of researchers to actually find cures and treatments.

[Kuya]

My oposition to that is on principle really, some patents and intellectual property laws seem to aim at making sure some people make a profit, and i don't see why a government should assure anyone a profit unless it were socially beneficial, and in the case of gene patents, it just seems ridiculous.

[Max™]

I'm torn on the subject, honestly, I wish there was a way to guarantee incentive for the companies trying to cure cancer, but if the only option is patenting genes I don't see how that is a good idea.

[Restrat]

basically the scientists are saying, "I spent my time and my money researching and found that gene A is something that causes a disease. Why should you be able to take this information to quickly make a drug to sell for profit when I probably did the hard work?"
The problem is if you don't have a system like this... then you are going to have a lot more secrecy. If you figure something out, you'll not want to publish it if you know someone else could more quickly develop tests or drugs, you'd wait till you finished it. So do you want pharmaceutical companies to pay less in patent fees or do you want quicker turnaround from bench to trials?
Of course some people will abuse the system either way. I remember reading recently about one where they just patented a gene because it might be something to do somehow with breast cancer, when all they did was an expression study, which you could do in a high school biology lab in 8 hours, and wanted anyone who ever tried to cure breast cancer to pay them.

All the work I do in genetics in funded by non-profits so I have experience with this luckily lol

[Woozie]

Well, the more you guys explain it, the more sense it makes. There must be some way to to allow the people who discovered the genes to receive proper compensation without hindering the research of others too much. But I don't know enough about the issue to really say much. I guess I'll just keep reading up on this.

[Kuya]

basically the scientists are saying, "I spent my time and my money researching and found that gene A is something that causes a disease. Why should you be able to take this information to quickly make a drug to sell for profit when I probably did the hard work?"
The problem is if you don't have a system like this... then you are going to have a lot more secrecy. If you figure something out, you'll not want to publish it if you know someone else could more quickly develop tests or drugs, you'd wait till you finished it. So do you want pharmaceutical companies to pay less in patent fees or do you want quicker turnaround from bench to trials?
Of course some people will abuse the system either way. I remember reading recently about one where they just patented a gene because it might be something to do somehow with breast cancer, when all they did was an expression study, which you could do in a high school biology lab in 8 hours, and wanted anyone who ever tried to cure breast cancer to pay them.

All the work I do in genetics in funded by non-profits so I have experience with this luckily lol

Isn't the result the same? If the company were to keep its findings a secret it would produce the same result if the company patented a gene it mapped; no one would be able to use it.

[Restrat]

it's not for big companies, which keep their findings a secret no matter what. it's for small labs or university labs who don't want the big company to take their work and profit from it.

[Kuya]

It just seems like it would be better to just subsidize some research rather than letting people patent it. It would benefit society far more if anyone could use the research created, and perhaps if the research were subsidized then there would be less inclination towards keeping it hidden (it should also be illegal to hide it if you had your research susidized with public money).

[Chun Liroy]

Isn't the result the same? If the company were to keep its findings a secret it would produce the same result if the company patented a gene it mapped; no one would be able to use it.

A company would be able to use a patented gene. They would just have to give accreditation (right word?) or money to the patent holders. For example the plastic on the end of shoe laces was patented (iirc, my teacher may have been bullshitting), and people have to pay money for each time they use it, it's not rendered unusable. However, if everything gets turned into secrecy, it severely limits our research capability. No sharing of results turns into multiple people/companies wasting efforts discovering the same thing than developing different things.

Example for this since I can't make that coherent: Company A discovers gene 13, which has many different applications. Instead of sharing the knowledge, they keep it to themselves. Assuming this is a lengthy process, Company B then wastes time discovering gene 13, when it could be exploring one of the applications. If that made sense at all ~.~

[Kuya]

According to Restrat, companies keep it a secret anyway.

[Restrat]

Yes, drug companies do keep what the find secret. However billions upon billions is already being poured into subsidizing research by the government or non profit agencies.

[Kuya]

Is it possible to just patent findings by publically or non profit funded from private industry? That is, research that is subsidized by the public or non profit entities should be protected from having their findings used for profit motifs, but the information should be free to use among non profit and public funded entities. I hope that made sense.

[Restrat]

That could be possible, but then only non-profit groups would be able to develop drugs if someone with that kind of funding made a discovery. That would work well for some areas and poorly for others.

[Kuya]

I suppose you're right, i just wish there were a way to make it easier and faster to see results from research in order to help people, but at the same time keep companies from using it as a free ride to some profit.

[Shiroikage]

Gene patenting is a bit of a mess at the moment. I'm not exactly against the concept, but the entire process really needs some major overhaul because it hasn't exactly evolved alongside genetic research from the 90s. I think that this case, even if it isn't likely to be particularly significant, really just outlines that fact.

As for what sort of research I'm doing, it's structural biology. Since I'm not entirely sure where I'm going next year (got a few offers to decide upon), I'm going to either be doing some rather classical structure biology using NMR, some sort of research in structural biophysics, or some very interesting structural work using the same technique that I currently use. I think the latter is unlikely because as good as this lab has been to me (I am getting 3 or 4 papers out of my undergrad work), I just want to get out of Saskatchewan. It's a shame because I really love the lab, I just don't much like living in the same province for 22 years.

Structural biology is my passion. It's more or less the study of the structure of biomolecules and how their structure dictates function.

[Woozie]

What exactly is structural biology?