Intellectual Property, Surrogate Licensing, and Precision Medicine

The fruits of the biotechnology revolution are beginning to be harvested. Recent regulatory approvals of a variety of advanced therapies—Keytruda (pembrolizumab), Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel), and patisiran—have ushered in an age of “precision medicine” treatments that target patients’ specific genetic, physiological, and environmental profiles rather than generalized diagnoses of disease. Therapies like these may soon be supplemented by gene editing technologies such as CRISPR, which could enable the targeted eradication of deleterious genetic variants to improve human health. But the intellectual property (IP) surrounding precision therapies and their foundational technology remain controversial. Precision therapies ultimately rely—and are roughly congruent with—basic scientific information developed in the service of academic research. Much of precision medicine’s IP, however, is held by academic research institutions that employ for-profit surrogate companies, companies responsible both for commercially developing university research and sublicensing university IP to others. This creates an uneasy tension between the public missions of universities and the commercial motives of surrogates, particularly universities’ goals of producing and disclosing scientific information, and surrogates’ goals of exploiting that information for commercial gain. This essay examines the challenges that surrogate licensing poses for the future of precision medicine. It begins by providing a brief summary of precision medicine and its recent developments. Next, it provides an overview of university patenting and the shift toward surrogate licensing. It then explores some of the difficulties concerning surrogate licensing in the context of precision medicine and, later, suggests modified licensing approaches and best practices that may better promote scientific discovery, the development of human therapies, and overall social welfare. Lastly, the essay discusses some larger doctrinal and theoretical implications arising from surrogate licensing in informationally intensive fields, like precision medicine

Intellectual Property, Surrogate Licensing, and Precision Medicine

The fruits of the biotechnology revolution are beginning to be harvested. Recent regulatory approvals of “precision medicine” therapies target patients’ specific genetic, physiological and environmental profiles rather than generalized diagnoses of disease. These may soon be supplemented by gene editing technologies such as CRISPR, which could enable the targeted eradication of deleterious genetic variants to improve human health. But the intellectual property surrounding precision therapies and their foundational technology remain controversial. Precision therapies ultimately rely—and are roughly congruent with—basic scientific information developed in the service of academic research. Much of precision medicine’s IP, however, is held by academic research institutions that employ for-profit surrogate companies, companies responsible both for commercially developing university research and sublicensing university IP to others. This creates an uneasy tension between the public missions of universities and the commercial motives of surrogates, particularly universities’ goals of producing and disclosing scientific information, and surrogates’ goals of exploiting that information for commercial gain. This essay examines the challenges that surrogate licensing poses for the future of precision medicine, and recommends licensing approaches and best practices that may better promote scientific discovery, the development of human therapies, and overall social welfare.Open Restriction set for Item 118079 on 2021-08-06T16:42:56Z with date null by [email protected] by Jacob Sherkow ([email protected]) on 2021-08-06T16:50:30Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Sherkow, Contreras - 2018 - Intellectual Property, Surrogate Licensing, and Precision Medicine.pdf: 683931 bytes, checksum: 8d463243caf984595ee680090fa127e4 (MD5)Approved for entry into archive by Ayla Kenfield ([email protected]) on 2021-08-06T19:28:24Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Sherkow, Contreras - 2018 - Intellectual Property, Surrogate Licensing, and Precision Medicine.pdf: 683931 bytes, checksum: 8d463243caf984595ee680090fa127e4 (MD5)Made available in DSpace on 2021-08-06T19:28:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sherkow, Contreras - 2018 - Intellectual Property, Surrogate Licensing, and Precision Medicine.pdf: 683931 bytes, checksum: 8d463243caf984595ee680090fa127e4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-04-17Ope

CRISPR, Surrogate Licensing, and Scientific Discovery

Several research institutions are embroiled in a legal dispute over the foundational patent rights to CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology, and it may take years for their competing claims to be resolved. But even before ownership of the patents is finalized, the institutions behind CRISPR have wasted no time capitalizing on the huge market for this groundbreaking technology by entering into a series of licensing agreements with commercial enterprises. With respect to the potentially lucrative market for human therapeutics and treatments, each of the key CRISPR patent holders has granted exclusive rights to a spinoff or "surrogate" company formed by the institution and one of its principal researchers. Although this model, in which a university effectively outsources the licensing and commercialization of a valuable patent portfolio to a private company, is not uncommon in the world of university technology transfer, we suggest it could rapidly bottleneck the use of CRISPR technology to discover and develop useful human therapeutics.Ope

Recent developments in genetics and medically assisted reproduction : from research to clinical applications

Two leading European professional societies, the European Society of Human Genetics and the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology, have worked together since 2004 to evaluate the impact of fast research advances at the interface of assisted reproduction and genetics, including their application into clinical practice. In September 2016, the expert panel met for the third time. The topics discussed highlighted important issues covering the impacts of expanded carrier screening, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, voiding of the presumed anonymity of gamete donors by advanced genetic testing, advances in the research of genetic causes underlying male and female infertility, utilisation of massively parallel sequencing in preimplantation genetic testing and non-invasive prenatal screening, mitochondrial replacement in human oocytes, and additionally, issues related to cross-generational epigenetic inheritance following IVF and germline genome editing. The resulting paper represents a consensus of both professional societies involved.Peer reviewe

Ethical, legal, and social issues in the Earth BioGenome Project

The Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) is an audacious endeavor to obtain whole-genome sequences of representatives from all eukaryotic species on Earth. In addition to the project’s technical and organizational challenges, it also faces complicated ethical, legal, and social issues. This paper, from members of the EBP’s Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues (ELSI) Committee, catalogs these ELSI concerns arising from EBP. These include legal issues, such as sample collection and permitting; the applicability of international treaties, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol; intellectual property; sample accessioning; and biosecurity and ethical issues, such as sampling from the territories of Indigenous peoples and local communities, the protection of endangered species, and cross-border collections, among several others. We also comment on the intersection of digital sequence information and data rights. More broadly, this list of ethical, legal, and social issues for large-scale genomic sequencing projects may be useful in the consideration of ethical frameworks for future projects. While we do not—and cannot—provide simple, overarching solutions for all the issues raised here, we conclude our perspective by beginning to chart a path forward for EBP’s work

Ethical, legal, and social issues in the Earth BioGenome Project.

The Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) is an audacious endeavor to obtain whole-genome sequences of representatives from all eukaryotic species on Earth. In addition to the project's technical and organizational challenges, it also faces complicated ethical, legal, and social issues. This paper, from members of the EBP's Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues (ELSI) Committee, catalogs these ELSI concerns arising from EBP. These include legal issues, such as sample collection and permitting; the applicability of international treaties, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol; intellectual property; sample accessioning; and biosecurity and ethical issues, such as sampling from the territories of Indigenous peoples and local communities, the protection of endangered species, and cross-border collections, among several others. We also comment on the intersection of digital sequence information and data rights. More broadly, this list of ethical, legal, and social issues for large-scale genomic sequencing projects may be useful in the consideration of ethical frameworks for future projects. While we do not-and cannot-provide simple, overarching solutions for all the issues raised here, we conclude our perspective by beginning to chart a path forward for EBP's work

Key challenges in bringing CRISPR-mediated somatic cell therapy into the clinic

Genome editing using clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated proteins offers the potential to facilitate safe and effective treatment of genetic diseases refractory to other types of intervention. Here, we identify some of the major challenges for clinicians, regulators, and human research ethics committees in the clinical translation of CRISPR-mediated somatic cell therapy