9 ms·

Who Owns the Biggest Biotech Discovery of the Century? (2014)

52 points by danboarder 12y ago

jforman 12y ago
"Zhang--who maintains he did the work independently" So he has a wet lab at home? color me skeptical. But I suppose you might as well do what you can to get a slice of a multi-billion dollar pie.
- refurb 12y ago
  He doesn't mean independently from the university he works at, he means independently from the other researchers who also discovered the technology.
  - jforman 12y ago
    Either way the university owns the IP regardless of who the "inventor" on the patent is, so why is this relevant?
    - refurb 12y ago
      Because universities commonly provide exclusive out-licensing for the patents they own? The inventor here started his own company based on the work the university owns.
fsloth 12y ago
This is probably the CRISPR technique article is talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR " By delivering the Cas9 protein and appropriate guide RNAs into a cell, the organism's genome can be cut at any desired location." Holy crap, I had no idea the field was this advanced.
- rurounijones 12y ago
  The applications section is... impressive to say the least.
- joeyspn 12y ago
  Yes, there were a couple of threads about this few days ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9235912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9235912
irascible 12y ago
That website. Omfg.
themartorana 12y ago
Considering that much of this research was likely paid for in part by federal grants and taxpayer money, especially research done on college campuses... I'm not a fan of watching this "IP war." In the end, it probably means delayed implementation in to therapies while companies battle it out in court, followed by insanely expensive treatments denied by insurance companies all while a few new billionaires are minted and thousands of people suffer and die unnecessarily. /end jaded pessimism
- rayiner 12y ago
  It's a question of how much the government pays versus how much private investors pay. Nobody will do this work for at-below cost (as government grants tend to be), with no upside potential. It's like a seed investor offering you these terms: we'll pay 80% of your development expenses, but we get 100% of all future profits. People in the medical space can do the math just as much as people in the consumer tech space.
- samch 12y ago
  I work in tech transfer office of a major research university. We are responsible for protecting the IP of our inventors and licensing it. We work hard to get research from the lab out into industry where it can have the broadest application and best chance for making an impact. For biological and pharmaceutical technologies, it can take quite some time to make this transition, and there is often a lot of risk that techniques which work well in the lab may fail when scaled or otherwise adapted for industry. Clinical trials take a lot of time and money, and the FDA review process is stringent. Those are all risks shouldered by our commercial partners whether they be start-ups or large multi-nationals. For our part, we need to make sure that they have the protection they need to carry those risks over a span of years until a product can make it to market. That protection starts as soon as we first file a provisional patent for a technology and continues through the patent lifecycle (continuations, divisionals, international phase, etc). There is a large cost to this from a university perspective, and we are provided with the budget to handle that (federal funds are not used to cover the patent costs). We are also very selective in how we license these technologies. The split is generally between exclusive and non-exclusive licensing, and we try to make the best call given the particular technology we're dealing with. In many cases, the technology is quite specific and there may only be a handful of companies in need of it. In many other scenarios we recognize the potentially broad application of the technology and work out ways to license it non-exclusively. There are also times when corporate partners aren't ready to bite due to the lack of maturity of the innovation. In those cases, we can help spin off startups to continue the development of the technology until it has reached a stage where it is more attractive to investors. One of the most important parts of this whole process is the royalty side of things. Since we are able to protect the IP and license it responsibly, our office generates a large amount of revenue. That money goes back to the university in a somewhat-complex system of distributions where the inventor's department and lab get a cut to help continue their research. Importantly, the inventors themselves also get direct payouts from the licensing revenue. I think we can all agree that if we were unable to patent and license their inventions, then they would not be able to share in the success of their efforts. * Full disclosure: We have licensed IP to the company mentioned in this article
ilamont 12y ago
This is almost entirely sourced from the MIT Technology Review's original reporting: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/532796/who-owns-the-biggest-biotech-discovery-of-the-century/ http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/532796/who-own...
- sctb 12y ago
  Thanks, we updated the link from http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/who-really-controls-revolutionary-new-crispr-cas9-technology/2014-12-05 http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/who-really-controls-revol....
- danboarder 12y ago
  Thanks for the heads-up
streptomycin 12y ago
At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombinant_DNA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombin... in 1975 scientists agreed to a moratorium on certain types of genetic research. Basically everyone agreed. I don't know how true it is, but a professor of mine who was active in this type of research back then said that as soon as the moratorium expired, everyone published all these fantastic results from huge complicated experiments that they had very obviously been doing during the moratorium. It's hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
biomimic 12y ago
It's going to be one of the following: http://calicolabs.com http://calicolabs.com http://buckinstitute.org http://buckinstitute.org http://genopharmix.com http://genopharmix.com http://humanlongevity http://humanlongevity
noname123 12y ago
Was wondering if someone can give a layman's explanation of how CRISPR gene editing works and its potential applications? Not trying to start any startup, instead just trying to learn more about CRISPR...

52 points by danboarder 12y ago

"Zhang--who maintains he did the work independently" So he has a wet lab at home? color me skeptical. But I suppose you might as well do what you can to get a slice of a multi-billion dollar pie.

refurb 12y ago
He doesn't mean independently from the university he works at, he means independently from the other researchers who also discovered the technology.
- jforman 12y ago
  Either way the university owns the IP regardless of who the "inventor" on the patent is, so why is this relevant?
  - refurb 12y ago
    Because universities commonly provide exclusive out-licensing for the patents they own? The inventor here started his own company based on the work the university owns.

fsloth 12y ago

This is probably the CRISPR technique article is talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR " By delivering the Cas9 protein and appropriate guide RNAs into a cell, the organism's genome can be cut at any desired location." Holy crap, I had no idea the field was this advanced.

rurounijones 12y ago
The applications section is... impressive to say the least.
joeyspn 12y ago
Yes, there were a couple of threads about this few days ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9235912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9235912

irascible 12y ago

That website. Omfg.

themartorana 12y ago

Considering that much of this research was likely paid for in part by federal grants and taxpayer money, especially research done on college campuses... I'm not a fan of watching this "IP war." In the end, it probably means delayed implementation in to therapies while companies battle it out in court, followed by insanely expensive treatments denied by insurance companies all while a few new billionaires are minted and thousands of people suffer and die unnecessarily. /end jaded pessimism

rayiner 12y ago
It's a question of how much the government pays versus how much private investors pay. Nobody will do this work for at-below cost (as government grants tend to be), with no upside potential. It's like a seed investor offering you these terms: we'll pay 80% of your development expenses, but we get 100% of all future profits. People in the medical space can do the math just as much as people in the consumer tech space.
samch 12y ago
I work in tech transfer office of a major research university. We are responsible for protecting the IP of our inventors and licensing it. We work hard to get research from the lab out into industry where it can have the broadest application and best chance for making an impact. For biological and pharmaceutical technologies, it can take quite some time to make this transition, and there is often a lot of risk that techniques which work well in the lab may fail when scaled or otherwise adapted for industry. Clinical trials take a lot of time and money, and the FDA review process is stringent. Those are all risks shouldered by our commercial partners whether they be start-ups or large multi-nationals. For our part, we need to make sure that they have the protection they need to carry those risks over a span of years until a product can make it to market. That protection starts as soon as we first file a provisional patent for a technology and continues through the patent lifecycle (continuations, divisionals, international phase, etc). There is a large cost to this from a university perspective, and we are provided with the budget to handle that (federal funds are not used to cover the patent costs). We are also very selective in how we license these technologies. The split is generally between exclusive and non-exclusive licensing, and we try to make the best call given the particular technology we're dealing with. In many cases, the technology is quite specific and there may only be a handful of companies in need of it. In many other scenarios we recognize the potentially broad application of the technology and work out ways to license it non-exclusively. There are also times when corporate partners aren't ready to bite due to the lack of maturity of the innovation. In those cases, we can help spin off startups to continue the development of the technology until it has reached a stage where it is more attractive to investors. One of the most important parts of this whole process is the royalty side of things. Since we are able to protect the IP and license it responsibly, our office generates a large amount of revenue. That money goes back to the university in a somewhat-complex system of distributions where the inventor's department and lab get a cut to help continue their research. Importantly, the inventors themselves also get direct payouts from the licensing revenue. I think we can all agree that if we were unable to patent and license their inventions, then they would not be able to share in the success of their efforts. * Full disclosure: We have licensed IP to the company mentioned in this article

ilamont 12y ago

This is almost entirely sourced from the MIT Technology Review's original reporting: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/532796/who-owns-the-biggest-biotech-discovery-of-the-century/ http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/532796/who-own...

sctb 12y ago
Thanks, we updated the link from http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/who-really-controls-revolutionary-new-crispr-cas9-technology/2014-12-05 http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/who-really-controls-revol....
danboarder 12y ago
Thanks for the heads-up

streptomycin 12y ago

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombinant_DNA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombin... in 1975 scientists agreed to a moratorium on certain types of genetic research. Basically everyone agreed. I don't know how true it is, but a professor of mine who was active in this type of research back then said that as soon as the moratorium expired, everyone published all these fantastic results from huge complicated experiments that they had very obviously been doing during the moratorium. It's hard to put the genie back in the bottle.

biomimic 12y ago

It's going to be one of the following: http://calicolabs.com http://calicolabs.com http://buckinstitute.org http://buckinstitute.org http://genopharmix.com http://genopharmix.com http://humanlongevity http://humanlongevity

noname123 12y ago

Was wondering if someone can give a layman's explanation of how CRISPR gene editing works and its potential applications? Not trying to start any startup, instead just trying to learn more about CRISPR...