Ever since Watson and Crick ended their seminal Nature paper in 1953 by saying that: "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the...more
When it comes to SARS-CoV-2 infection (and resulting COVID-19), it seems our Neanderthal ancestors giveth and taketh away. Genetic material inherited from interbreeding between Neanderthals and early humans has been shown to...more
The Fountain of Youth -- an enduring aspiration, particularly as the ravages of age reduce human faculties prior to leading inexorably to death. Reduction in sight is the human faculty that can have the greatest effect on...more
Over the past decade, genetic archeology has revealed two branches of the human family tree, one known since the 19th Century (the Neanderthals) and the other more recently discovered (the Denisovans, an Asian relative of the...more
Cancer of the appendix is a very rare form of cancer, having an incidence of 0.12 per 1,000,000 person-years (Siegel et al., 2020, Cancer statistics 2020 70:7-30). Incidence is rising (by 232% from 2000-2016 in the U.S.)...more
Earlier this year, and almost one year to the day (January 17, 2019) that the Opposition Division (OD) of the European Patent Office revoked in its entirety European Patent No. EP 2771468, the Technical Board of Appeal...more
12/9/2020
/ Appeals ,
Bioengineering ,
CRISPR ,
EU ,
European Patent Office ,
Human Genes ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Paris Convention ,
Patent Applications ,
Patents ,
Priority Patent Claims ,
Revocation
Svante Pääbo created the science of detecting Neanderthal DNA in archeological samples (and living humans) almost single-handedly (see Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes). So it will come as little surprise to many...more
Perception by the five human senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch) varies significantly between individuals and populations. Some use these differences to their advantage, such as sommeliers capable of detecting...more
Chemotherapeutic drug resistance is one reason cancer remains an unsolved clinical problem despite the efforts ever since President Nixon declared his "War on Cancer" in 1971. Cancer cells, due in part to the genetic...more
The inherent, ineluctable unpredictability of biology can be the basis for biological patent claims being non-obvious (lacking the requisite "reasonable expectation of success"; see, e.g., OSI Pharmaceuticals v. Apotex) and...more
The human tendency to identify with tribes of "like" humans (related by family, place of origin, or religion, among other bases) was perverted during the Twentieth Century (and in some places remains so today) into the idea...more
March 23rd was the deadline for the parties in Interference No. 106,115 between Senior Party The Broad Institute, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (collectively, "Broad") and Junior Party the...more
Left-handedness is a uniquely human trait, with 90% human populations globally being right-handed since the Paleolithic (extending from 3.3 million years ago to the end of the Pleistocene). A feature of motor control, the...more
The BRCA2 gene is one member of a pair of genes that changed the patent landscape several years ago, when the Supreme Court ruled that "mere" isolation was insufficient to render genomic embodiments thereof patent eligible,...more
Human history is often something modern man only sees as through a glass, darkly. This is particularly the case when that history did not occur in the Mediterranean, the Nile Valley, India, or China, or when there is no...more
On April 6th, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continued to loosen the reins on the genetic diagnostic and DNA analysis company 23andMe with regarding to direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing related to...more
In an article in The Cancer Letter entitled "Robert Cook-Deegan's Viewers' Guide To the Super Bowl of Gene Patent Cases," Professor Robert Cook-Deegan (at right) of the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy and Sanford...more
In a 106-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Shelby on Monday denied Myriad Genetics motion for preliminary injunction in Myriad Genetics v. Ambry Genetics. Characteristic of its aggressive defense of its...more
3/12/2014
/ AMP v Myriad ,
BRCA ,
DNA ,
Genetic Materials ,
Human Genes ,
Myriad ,
Myriad v Ambry ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Preliminary Injunctions
Gene-by-Gene, Inc. was one of the first direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic diagnostics companies to announce that it would offer BRCA1/BRCA2 testing after the Supreme Court's decision last June that certain of Myriad Genetics'...more
Earlier this week, Sequenom, Inc. filed its opening brief in Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. v. Sequenom, Inc., appealing summary judgment that its licensed claims to a genetic diagnostic method for detecting fetal diseases and...more
1/31/2014
/ DNA ,
Genetic Materials ,
Genetic Testing ,
Human Genes ,
Mayo v. Prometheus ,
Patent Applications ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
SCOTUS ,
Section 101 ,
Sequenom ,
Summary Judgment
Things are getting worse for genetic diagnostics company 23andMe. On the heels of receiving a Warning Letter from the FDA over its Personal Genomic Services (PGS) test (see "FDA Threatens Agency Action Against 23andMe Over...more
As reported in Fierce Medical Devices by Damian Garde, the FDA has issued a Warning Letter to personal genomics company 23andMe, demanding that the company stop selling its Personal Genomic Services (PGS) product without...more
Some of our commenters have asked (with greater or lesser degrees of stridency) that we "take a position" on claims like the Myriad method claims at issue in the lawsuits brought against Ambry Genetics, Gene-by-Gene, and...more
Turnabout being fair play, Myriad Genetics today filed suit against Quest Diagnostics, Inc. and Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute for patent infringement in an action brought in the Federal District Court for the District...more
After a brief hiatus that saw Counsyl and Quest Diagnostics file declaratory judgment actions in alternate venues, Myriad has filed yet another lawsuit against a genetic diagnostics company that brought its own BRCA gene...more