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Harvard and M.I.T. Scientists Win Gene-Editing Patent Fight
- slantaclaus 10y agoRode $EDIT from $30/share to $15/share, here we go (designer) baby
- aerovistae 10y agowhat??
- HeavenBanned 10y agoI think he's saying he's banking on a vast market of "super babies" going to be born. It'll be on par with investing for college tuition. i.e. Interested in getting your newborn baby with a super brain? Super strength? Super musical talent? Pony up a few hundred K, and watch it become a reality with the power of genetic engineering.
- DilutedCoke 10y agolets fucking go
- kneel 10y agoUC Berkeley's Doudna should be livid. She worked on this technology for years, developing it from it's infancy to in vitro proof. MIT scientists swooped in and within 2 months applied it in-vivo and patented it. I guess to be rewarded in science you have to be a master in your field and intensely concerned with IP deadlines. It's really a shame that Berkeley loses licensing on a tech that was 95% developed at Berkeley.
- whitenoice 10y agoInterested to know what other licenses Berkeley lost, can you state few notable ones?
- onewaystreet 10y ago> I guess to be rewarded in science you have to be a master in your field and intensely concerned with IP deadlines. Dr. Zhang and MIT proved that the Crispr technique would work in plant, animal and human cells. The value of the patents is in that research, not Doudna's in vitro proof.
- kneel 10y agoDoudna took Cripsr from an odd genomic pattern to proof of Cripr/Cas9 being a bacterial immunity complex complete with proof of mechanism. Transferring that body of work over to in-vivo is trivial in comparison to what she did. Transferring genes from one organism to another is run of the mill molecular biology.
- onewaystreet 10y ago> Transferring that body of work over to in-vivo is trivial in comparison to what she did. If this was the case then she would have won the patent fight. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board thought otherwise. Did you read their 51-page decision?
- johncolanduoni 10y agoJust world fallacy much? Did you read the decision?
- libeclipse 10y agoWhat are your credentials?
- kneel 10y agoI work in the field. Very familiar with Crispr/Cas9
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 10y agoTransferring that body of work over to in-vivo is trivial in comparison to what she did. Transferring genes from one organism to another is run of the mill molecular biology. Nobody, including Doudna, would agree with this.
- acomjean 10y agoI'm one of those who wonder if these things should be patented. That being said: "Swoop in and patented it" is not exactly how it goes. There is a long back story to this with a lot of people discoing stuff to make this possible.[1] CRISPR-CAS9 will probably be supplanted by something else. They're already working on it (hopefully with fewer off target effects). http://www.nature.com/news/alternative-crispr-system-could-improve-genome-editing-1.18432 http://www.nature.com/news/alternative-crispr-system-could-i... You can watch a video by Zheng (the patent holder) on how CRISPR works if you are curious[2] I doubt she's livid, they won a lot of research prize money from their research [2] and she's probably collect money from patents from the company she started with the patent holder "Editas Medicine. Co-founded by the Broad’s Zhang (and also by Doudna, in more collegial days)"[2] as with most patent disputes the lawyers are the real winners: "The Broad’s legal costs, paid by Editas, topped $15 million last summer. UC’s, paid by Caribou, have passed $5 million. Neither party has said what they have spent since then."[2] [1]http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(15)01705-5 http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(15)01705-5 [2]https://www.statnews.com/2017/02/15/crispr-patent-ruling/ https://www.statnews.com/2017/02/15/crispr-patent-ruling/
- kneel 10y agoI would definitely take that cell review with a grain of salt seeing as it was written by MIT/Broad institute.
- acomjean 10y agoWhy? It has a lot of interesting history of the discovery of CRISPR which is really interesting..
- tedsanders 10y agoThe article, written by Eric Lander of the Broad Institute, was widely criticized[1][2][...] at its publication for being a veiled attempt to reframe history to support the Broad Institute's patent claims. Note a number of their framing decisions - choosing to group Doudna et. al.'s contributions as #4 in a long list and setting Zheng's contribution by itself in a different color. Seems innocuous when skimming over it, but the choice of what to emphasize and categorize is not objectively deterministic, and this particular framing and coloring was no doubt chosen deliberately. Many think there was purposeful deception behind that deliberate choice. [1] http://genotopia.scienceblog.com/573/a-whig-history-of-crispr/ http://genotopia.scienceblog.com/573/a-whig-history-of-crisp... [2] http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1825 http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1825
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 10y agoShe worked on this technology for years, developing it from it's infancy to in vitro proof. MIT scientists swooped in and within 2 months applied it in-vivo and patented it. This is wrong. It's really a shame that Berkeley loses licensing on a tech that was 95% developed at Berkeley. This is very wrong.
- CalChris 10y agoIn my opinion, an opinion, the Berkeley IP office is a pain and thus its own enemy. They could take a lesson from Stanford and be more of a partner and advocate for faculty and students. They lost Howe (EE105) to Stanford over simply being a pain rather than a resource.
- dekhn 10y agoDamn straight- Berkeley's IP office is absolutely impossible to deal with. They value their property infinitely high.
- CalChris 10y agoThey also value their prerogatives infinitely high which makes them a pain internally. Outside of the BSD case, I'm struggling to think of anything they've done right.
- amelius 10y agoI'm strongly against patents in science. Science = standing on the shoulders of others. It is not fair if the one (momentarily) standing on top receives all the benefits.
- eumoria 10y agoparticularly when a lot of the research was achieved by charity funding and tax grants. public funded then privately profited is a disgusting outcome of our current research system.
- refurb 10y agoI would disagree. Securing a patent means that further investment is possible. Yes, one of the two labs discovered CRISPR. OK, now what? It's not a treatment at this point, it's just a technique. So someone has to invest a ton of money to turn the technique into a therapy for humans. And I would bet that investment will absolutely dwarf what's been spent so far.
- amelius 10y agoThis means that only one line of further development will be possible, since a patent is basically a license for a monopoly. Instead, we could grant subsidies and have multiple developments working in parallel.
- refurb 10y agoDepending on what the other uses are, the patent holder is always able to out-license the patent for specific uses. This is actually pretty common in biotech.
- tmptmp 10y agoI am no fan of patents, especially most software patents. I hate them. But in other hard sciences the story seems to be slightly different. In theory the "subsidy to multiple parallel projects" approach seems great but it isn't so in practice. How much subsidy could be given and to how many parallel projects for a given technique? There are risks involved. We don't have infinite resources to throw at multiple parallel projects working on different problems using multiple different techniques.
- Moshe_Silnorin 10y agoThe patent system remains absurd. I have mixed feeling about biotechnology, though. On one hand I'm a big fan of human genetic engineering for increased IQ which is looking extremely possible in the near future (hopefully something that will be available here in Singapore before I have kids), on the other hand as these techniques get cheaper and easier to use we may get to the point where any madman with an IQ over 145 could kill hundreds of millions. Nick Bostrom asks this question in his book: if building a nuclear bomb turned out to be trivial, like putting sand in a microwave, would human civilization have survived? We will find out if synthetic biology keeps advancing. Or maybe this is my nightmare and the patent system will slow down progress enough to save humanity.
- refurb 10y agohuman genetic engineering for increased IQ which is looking extremely possible in the near future (hopefully something that will be available here in Singapore before I have kids) I wouldn't hold your breath. Intelligence is not a single gene you can turn on or off. We don't know enough about what genes to modify (even if we could modify them).
- Moshe_Silnorin 10y agoIt's polygenic, like height. People who I read in the space of cognitive genomics, such as Steve Hsu and Razib Khan, agree it's looking increasingly plausible. It would require modifying hundreds of alleles. Embryo selection is possible now, just not useful until we have a million genomes tagged with their donors' IQ. 1 of 10 embryo selection give you about 8 IQ points per generation. Hsu thinks Crispr will obsolete embryo selection before it's in wide use. He also said the following: >I think there is good evidence that existing genetic variants in the human population (i.e., alleles affecting intelligence that are found today in the collective world population, but not necessarily in a single person) can be combined to produce a phenotype which is far beyond anything yet seen in human history. This would not surprise an animal or plant breeder — experiments on corn, cows, chickens, drosophila, etc. have shifted population means by many standard deviations (e.g., +30 SD in the case of corn).
- dkarapetyan 10y agoUnfortunate. Clearly everyone involved had a part to play in the discovery but I guess there is no such thing as a joint patent.
- unavoidable 10y agoIn fact, the patent system comes close. If what you contributed was inventive and new, you get a patent on that slice of what you invented. For someone to commercialize the whole thing, they may need to pay both parties (essentially both parties who had a part to play in the "discovery" will be paid for their work). In many cases like this, the parties have to cross-license each other (pay each other or license each other for their respective patents). That is actually what the article says. "An appeals board of the patent office ruled that the gene-editing inventions claimed by the two institutions were separate and do not overlap." "Ultimately, companies wanting to apply Crispr for use in medicine, agriculture or other fields might need licenses from both the Broad Institute and the University of California, a lawyer for the university said. ..."
- WildUtah 10y agoThe usual result is that no creative applications of the new technology are legal until both patents run out in 20 years. Or that a foreign nation that didn't accept the patents becomes the only center of innovation and the nation that paid for it becomes a backwater. One or both of those happened with steam engines, sewing machines, and aeroplanes. Humanity was not better off. It was narrowly averted in photography, automobiles, and computer software by governments invalidating the pioneer patents in the field for the benefit of mankind.
- spangry 10y agoI hear ya, especially on aeroplanes (it turns out the Wright brothers were kinda jerks). It's such a shame that, due to the current nature of political discourse, it seems that the only two plausible options are (a) artificial and stifling patent monopolies or (b) expropriation by the state. There seems to be a very sensible, but verboten, middle ground here: government funding of socially beneficial research and, if a significant public benefit can be demonstrated, compulsory state acquisition under the condition that just compensation is given.
- dahart 10y agoThe article doesn't mention Eric Lander's controversial article a few months back, but this outcome certainly seems like what he might have been working toward. Is it considered to have given any weight to their case? *Edit: I guess time is flying, that was more than a year ago. Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10934149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10934149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10917391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10917391
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 10y agoIt wasn’t a letter. It was an article in Cell.
- dahart 10y agoYou are absolutely right. But, since I called it an article, and linked to the article in Cell (via HN), I'm a bit lost as to what you're trying to tell me. Sorry, is the premise of my question weird or something? I don't know the whole backstory of Crispr or all the people involved, I just know it sounded amazing when I first heard about it on Radiolab, and then it got mired in this fight over credit and rights. I'm wondering if Lander's piece was influential in this first victory, and whether this outcome was part of his intent in writing it.
- bbctol 10y agoOf course this is what he was hoping for, that was obvious at the time. The particular article was almost certainly not given any weight during the case, it's just a restatement of their general argument.
- source99 10y agoI would imagine that this would go on to appeal and be in the courts for years if it decades. Especially once the parents actually produce royalties. No?
- jghn 10y agoThis has nothing to do with Harvard nor MIT. it is now a company of its own right, but the name still persists
- dbcooper 10y agoApparently the following (humble and honest) statement made by Doudna to a UC system magazine[1] hurt their case[2]: >Says Doudna, "Our 2012 paper was a big success, but there was a problem. We weren't sure if CRISPR/Cas9 would work in eukaryotes-plant and animal cells." Unlike bacteria, plant and animal cells have a cell nucleus, and inside, DNA is stored in a tightly wound form, bound in a structure called chromatin. [1] https://berkeley.app.box.com/v/catalyst-9-1 https://berkeley.app.box.com/v/catalyst-9-1 [2] https://twitter.com/antonioregalado/status/832003434471632897 https://twitter.com/antonioregalado/status/83200343447163289...
- joeevans1000 10y agoMaybe universities shouldn't be businesses, and what might be a prevailing way to edit genes for quite some time shouldn't be controlled. Perhaps this should be in the commonwealth. I've been to university talks where the presenters declined to answer certain questions because they'd violate the business interests of the school. In other words, the other researchers could not learn about the presenter's discovery and innovation. I think universities should be about advancing and sharing knowledge.
- Thimothy 10y agoIs "sharing" equivalent to "giving for free the hard work to the private industry"? Most of the time the system works as intended. The researchers do their research on public money, most of what they do becomes public knowledge through papers, if something noteworthy is found, it's patented and licensed and the university gets its cut. The system kind of fails sometimes at giving the researchers (in plural, not just the tenured rockstar) its due, but many times are the scientists the ones that open an enterprise to work it out. In this case, it's not that system that has failed, it's that different universities are fighting over who has the right to license it. I have no horse in this race, but this it's probably going to become even more common, as improvements on existing technology become smaller and it's harder to tell who deserves the full credit.
- Retric 10y agoThis is 100% paid work, nobody is working for 'free'. MIT is well known for the second form of patient troll where you look for years of very promising research done by someone else, make minimal change using government funds, and then get to lock things up for 20 years. Worse there is now a huge incentive to find some other trivial change to get around this patent thus costing the field 100's of times more than their initial 'effort'.
- urza 10y agoThis. Please read the excellent book "Against Intellectual Monopoly" if you haven't already. http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfi...
- nzjrs 10y agoInteresting, especially because I think most people in the field expect the Nobel prize to contrast this decision and go to Doudna+ and not Zhang
- Gatsky 10y agoSigh, it's the PCR patent story all over again [1]. As always, government and charity funded researchers are spending government and charity funds on fighting each other for the right to make a fortune from the fruits of government and charity funded research. 20 years later the patents expire, and all that's happened is you've slowed down medical progress. What a great legacy for Eric Lander and the Broad. Punks. [1] http://www.economist.com/node/3839765 http://www.economist.com/node/3839765
- cmdrfred 10y agoThis is a question I've asked many times and never got an answer, when you donate "for the cure" does that cure end up patented and sold back to you? That seems more like Kickstarter without the rewards than charity to me.
- alextheparrot 10y agoIn the end it might, the researchers themselves partner with pharma to do scale out.
- refurb 10y agoDoes it really slow down medical progress? One argument is that getting a patent ensures exclusivity to use the technology. In turn, that drastically improves the likelihood of getting a return on any investment dollars. And finally, that attracts a lot more capital than a non-profit or gov't funded agency could typically get.
- Gatsky 10y agosee the link in my comment. Like PCR, CRISPR is a relatively simple technology. It doesn't require billions of dollars of R&D to make it useful. Less useful gene editing tech (Zinc fingers, TALENS) have already been used in clinical trials. So just like PCR or that blood Myriad Genetics gene patent on BRCA1, patents hinder progress, make research more expensive, and impair new companies from getting started.
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- coldcode 10y agoYou take public money to do research, any fruits from that money belong to the public. You don't get to start companies and patent the end result and get rich off of our money. If you purely take private money you work in some startup you can do stuff like this. Even then I would argue that understanding or discovering some biological entity should not be patentable.
- throwaway729 10y ago> You take public money to do research, any fruits from that money belong to the public TBF we did try this in the US, and this is exactly how things worked for decades. That rule was eventually shot down for a whole host of reasons. > If you purely take private money you work in some startup you can do stuff like this How about this scenario: Person A invents something using public money. Person B creates a start-up using Person A's invention. Person C needs said invention, and can only get it from Person B, who charges them for it. In other words, if the fruits of the labor are going to be extracted by someone, shouldn't that someone be the person who made the actual discovery (assuming they're willing to do the business side as well)?
- samch 10y agoWe've been having this discussion on HN for years now, and I haven't seen many workable alternatives to the current system as it applies to pharma. A lot of this boils down to risk and risk mitigation. Because the monetary outlays and failure risks are so considerable to shepherd a technology through the entire life cycle from conception to commercial availability, big pharma has to be extraordinarily selective about where they place their bets. They generally do not invest in early stage developments. In fact, these days, we have to find partners or spin out startups to help further the research to even get to the point that pharma wants to talk about licensing. The patent protections allow the time to get to that point and ensure our partners that they will have some protection to assure revenues (assuming the technology even makes it to market) sufficient to offset the costs associated with the various phases of clinical trials. It's by no means a perfect system, and there are some slightly different models out there. Singapore, for example, requires the research dollars to be reimbursed upon commercialization. That is a fairly small ecosystem to analyze, however, when compared to the scale of US investment via agencies like the NIH and NSF. Edit to add disclaimer: We have patents licensed to the company referenced in this article (Editas).
- transfire 10y agoI believe the government should apply eminent domain to key technologies that promise wide-scale advancement for society. Technologies like CRISPR are far too powerful and have far too much potential to be confined to control by a single entity.
- stillsut 10y agoThe traditional explanation for the economic usefulness of patents is that it incentivizes public disclosure of discoveries, and prevents trade secrets from dominating the innovation economy. (Imagine if the cure to cancer was kept as secret as the recipe for Coca Cola!) The odd part of this case is that it might cause researchers to hold back from publishing their discoveries until they're sure their own institution can 'squeeze out all the juice' and best monetize the novel finding. On the other hand, perhaps it incentivizes more classical research institutions to employ top teams of researchers who can prototype the 'medicine' part of a biomedicine discovery as quickly as possible. In truth, there are a lot of amazing discoveries at the ground level of molecular biology, which plausibly could revolutionize human health, but are still waiting decades later to be shown to be practical.