Next Gen News

scientists studying diseases like cancer are embarrassed to have to pay companies holding patents on specific genes

You wear a set of instructions for each cell, encoded in DNA. Its genome of three billion letters of the genetic code is not only unique to you now, but it is unique for every human being who has never and will never exist. It contains approximately 22,000 genes, and it was a surprise to geneticists at the completion of the Human Genome Project in April 2003, we have so little less than a nematode. But what you can find even more shocking is that hundreds, if not thousands of these genes are in fact owned by someone else.

The birth of patents quickly followed our ability to read human genes in the 1990 genes, and patents covering general extraction process, reading and diagnostic tests for specific bits the DNA of an individual. There is a myth that has patented a fifth of the genes that each of us carries in our cells, but it is not quite stand up to scrutiny: the language used in a large number of patents does not necessarily exclude its use. However, no useful work, including research and genetic diagnosis in a substantial part of their unique genetic heritage is prohibited without a license.

This may seem confusing. Patents grant ownership of a process or invention. Your genes are not. But the lack of clarity in the law has made the patent can be granted in a single gene. The best documented case concerns two genes that we all, BRCA1 and BRCA2. Some versions of these predispose women to breast and ovarian cancer, so that in the 1990s, a company called Myriad Genetics patents obtained them with the intention to pay for the diagnosis. The cost is $ 3,500 (€ 2,300). This was challenged in the U.S. courts in 2010, patents revoked Myriad but they won again on appeal. In the coming weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court review the decision of the appeal and decide whether the DNA can be held. The result will be of great importance.