U.S. government changes its stance on gene patenting

Posted: October 31st, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Biotech, Patent | No Comments »

The U.S. government, which formerly allowed genes to be patented, has now reversed its position, stating that genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature. The Department of Justice filed a brief on Friday in its capacity as a friend of court in a case dealing with human genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. In March, a district court judge ruled in the case that the two patents which had been held by Myriad Genetics and the University of Utah, are invalid. It is unclear whether or not the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will implement this extreme policy change, having already issued thousands of patents on genes, including approximately twenty percent of human genes. If the Patent Office discontinues issuing patents on genes, it is likely to provoke the ire of biotechnology companies, who state that gene patenting is essential in the development of personalized medicine.

US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issues allowance for patent of progesterone use in pre-term birth prevention

Posted: October 14th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Biotech, Patent | No Comments »

As reported by ag-ip-news.com the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued an allowance for using progesterone to treat or prevent pre-term births. The allowance is a precursor to the actual patent issuance itself. Specifically, the allowance is directed at progesterone treatment of women with a short cervix in the middle of pregnancy.

To begin with, progesterone is an important female hormone (though it is also found in males) involved in regulating menstruation and pregnancy. Normally, pre-term birth (before 37 weeks of gestation) can put a baby at greater risk of undesirable complications. Since one of the major predictors of pre-term birth is a short cervix in the middle of pregnancy, this allowance might be another step in reducing the mortality of infants.

Biobank Governance, Privacy, and Informed Consent: Austin and Lemmens

Posted: April 26th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Biotech, Faculty Publications, Featured, Privacy | No Comments »

[By Prof. Trudo Lemmens]

Medical research is increasingly relying on biobanks, large repositories of human biological material and related health information. These can be best conceived as elaborate research infrastructures, which allow researchers, often brought together in international research consortia, to study in more detail the long-term interaction between genes, environment and life-style. Biobanks are an increasingly crucial research tool, but they also raise complex legal and governance issues, particularly related to privacy. A key challenge is the difficulty of adequately informing people who donate tissue samples and give access to personal data about the type of research that will be undertaken–often in the distant future–and what specific privacy risks are associated with it. There has been much debate about how traditional requirements of informed consent can be respected in the context of such open-ended information systems; whether informed consent should even be required; and how privacy protection can best be assured. Policy makers have taken various initiatives in this area. Genome Canada recently published, for example, a policy brief written by Timothy Caulfield and Bartha M. Knoppers to inform federal policy-makers of the various regulatory and policy options related to consent in the context of biobanks (http://www.genomecanada.ca/en/ge3ls/policy-portal/#coreAdvisory).

Read the rest of this entry »

  • RSS