Tag: Bayh-Dole Act

Hundred dollar bills rolled up in a pill bottle

How Soon Could President Biden Enable Generic Competition to Xtandi? Very Quickly, If There Is the Will.

James Love Leave a comment

By James Love

On March 21, 2023, the NIH, acting on behalf of HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, rejected a petition from four cancer patients asking HHS to use the government’s rights in the prostate cancer drug enzalutamide, in order to remedy pricing abuses by the patent holder. The abuse is charging U.S. cancer patients two to six times as much as other high income countries for Astellas’ and Pfizer’s Xtandi, a drug invented on federal grants.

The cancer patients could seek a remedy to the abusive and discriminatory pricing because the U.S. government had funded the R&D for each of the three patented inventions that are currently blocking generic competition.

Read More

Gamblers make bets at the roulette table in a casino.

We All Stand to Benefit from Biden’s $2 Billion Bet on the Bioeconomy

Matthew Chun Leave a comment

By Matthew Chun

Business is bustling for biotechnology and biomanufacturing. On September 12, 2022, President Biden signed an executive order, launching a “whole-of-government approach to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing.” And two days later, he backed it up with a national summit and a $2 billion spending plan.

But who stands to benefit from this large commitment of federal money? We all do.

Read More

concept illustration of genes in DNA.

A Response to ‘Another Legislative Attempt to Revive Gene Patenting’

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff 1 Comment

By Emily Michiko Morris

Professor Jorge Contreras’ commentary on the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2022 objects to Senator Thom Tillis’ recently introduced bill. Specifically, he argues that proposed inclusion of isolated and purified human genes and other naturally occurring substances as patent eligible subject matter is unnecessary and would both stymie research and obstruct access to medicine. But the truth is these criticisms rely mostly on narrative and anecdote rather than rigorous empirical evidence. (Professor Contreras has written an article acknowledging the many narratives behind the gene patenting debate: see Narratives of Gene Patenting, 43 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 1133 (2016)).

Read More

Pipette and test tubes in a rack

Novartis, Dana Farber, Oregon Health & Science University Wait 18 Years to Disclose NIH Funding in Key Gleevec Patent

James Love 2 Comments

By James Love

This is a story about U.S. patent number 6,958,335, and how it took more than 18 years for Novartis to acknowledge National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding in a key patent for Gleevec, allowing Novartis to shape the narrative regarding its role in the development of Gleevec, and also to avoid demands that Novartis make the invention “available to the public on reasonable terms,” which is an obligation under the Bayh-Dole Act.

On May 10, 2001, the United States FDA approved a new drug, imatinib, initially for the treatment of a rare indication: chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). The drug was registered by Novartis, which sold the drug under the brand name Gleevec in the United States and several other markets, and as Glivec in others.

Read More