Worms, DVDs and SARS: new models for intellectual property in genomics?

March 9, 2007

Granville Island Hotel, Vancouver

By Heather Walmsley

Worms and DVDs may hold the secrets to innovative new intellectual property regimes for genomics, according to leading scientists and lawyers in a workshop at Vancouver’s Granville Island Hotel on Friday March 9th. Similarities between the soil-loving hermaphrodites and shiny optical disks are not immediately obvious to the public eye. But as a model research organism and an innovative product, the worm and the DVD represent trail-blazing alternatives to traditional patenting regimes. They also offer hope for faster development of SARS vaccines.

The one day workshop – Genomics and Intellectual Property: Considering Alternatives to Traditional Patenting – was convened by the Intellectual Property and Policy Research Group at the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia, with the support of Genome BC’s GE3LS program. Leading scientists, lawyers, scholars and industry representatives from Canada, the US and Europe were invited to consider the problems of the current patent regime for genomics and to suggest potential alternatives.

Cheryl Power opened proceedings with a description of the team’s Genome BC-funded collaboration with the “Dissecting Gene Expression Networks in Mammalian Organogenesis” (MORGEN) project – the primary workshop sponsor (1). MORGEN scientists are investigating how gene expression networks regulate organ development in mouse embryos. Power challenged participants to consider useful IP models for such a project – housed in the BC Cancer Agency, subject to data release policies, whose science requires academic openness.

The unique nature of the Canadian research context stimulated debate. Tania Bubela of the University of Alberta reviewed international media and policy responses to one Canadian story – the Ontario government’s decision to ignore the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene patents held by Utah-based Myriad Genetics and to develop its own breast cancer screening tests in 2003. Robert Cook Deegan, Director of Duke University’s Centre for Genome Ethics, Law and Policy, advocated more qualitative research into IP and genomics. He also challenged Canadian entrepreneurs to develop R&D policies that harness patent regimes in some of the biggest markets overseas – the US, Europe and Japan.

Canada is responsible for ground-breaking innovations in genomics, despite smaller research budgets and local markets than its southern neighbour. The British Columbia Cancer Agency Genome Sciences Center was, for example, one of the agencies to first sequence the SARS-associated coronavirus at the urging of the World Health Organisation back in 2003. The new challenge for these collaborating organisations – which include the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Erasmus University in Rotterdam and the University of Hong Kong - is to protect their investments without fragmenting the intellectual property. A complex network of patents could stall development of vaccines downstream should SARS re-emerge.

DVDs may hold the answer, according to Olaf de Jager, legal counsel and business consultant for Vironovative B.V. in the Netherlands. The DVD, along with the MPEG and other consumable electronics, emerged from a process of cooperative ‘patent pooling’ between companies. Patent pooling could offer similar hope for SARS, de Jager told workshop participants. Non-exclusive licensing of pooled SARS gene patents could push license-holders to innovate. This could drive downstream development of vaccines. It could herald a win-win-win situation - for agencies that have invested time and money sequencing the virus, for manufacturers wanting to develop economically viable vaccines and for public health.

The worm may hold greater hope for the future, according to Don Moerman, a Professor of Zoology at UBC and a Genome B.C. Principal Investigator. With approximately 20,000 genes, at least 7,000 of which have human equivalents, the nematode (or roundworm) can be used as a model organism for human gene function. It is also a model for how public domain research can stimulate product development and economic growth.

Moerman described his work with a nematode called the C. elegans. At the UBC Gene Knockout Project, his team is slowly ‘knocking out’ or deleting each of the genes in this worm to determine their function. They have begun with genes that are similar to human genes associated with disease. They choose what to knock-out on the basis of requests. They do it for free. And they publish their results immediately and publicly. Basic research requires an open environment with a free exchange of ideas, according to Moerman. Too often, intellectual property can threaten this.

Community is important for the progress of science, Moerman told workshop participants. Initiatives such as Wormbook.org (an open access collection of peer-reviewed chapters on the C. elegans) and Wormbase (an international consortium of worm researchers) are shining examples. Such open science can also make good business sense. And it doesn’t prevent the pursuit of patents by industry downstream. There may be no intellectual property in this worm, but many products could spawn from it.

Moerman’s convincing presentation on the need to protect open-source basic science illustrates just how much scientists have to offer intellectual property debates. And his emphasis on community was reinforced by Tina Piper, the last speaker of the day. A lawyer, co-Director of Creative Commons Canada and Assistant Professor at McGill, Piper is familiar with the potential and challenges of open collaborative scientific networks. Attempts to develop open-source licensing for biotechnology may be a waste of energy, she argued. Pledges, legally binding promises and efforts to develop communities and networks of institutions may be more fruitful.

This workshop was unique in its own attempt to stimulate dialogue and community-building between the distinct domains of law, industry and basic science. Did it achieve its objectives? “I thought the event went extremely well,” said co-organiser Cheryl Power. “We had key representatives sharing many different perspectives allowing for a deep discussion of the subject matter. One of the most positive outcomes of the day was the building of bridges to some of the key scholars and practitioners in the field.”

References

(1) The Genome-BC funded "Building a GE3LS Architecture" project also contributed funding to the workshop and is a co-funder of the Intellectual Property and Policy Research Group.

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