International News
Implications of Amgen/deCODE Deal for Genetic Testing Consumers
The big biotech news of the day is the $415 million sale of deCODE Genetics to Amgen. Coverage of the deal is everywhere, including a typically excellent overview from Matthew Herper of Forbes.
We’ve written extensively about deCODE here at the Genomics Law Report over the years, including the company’s well-publicized bankruptcy and privatization two years ago. That transaction left plenty of deCODE shareholders out in the cold, and those shareholders aren’t likely to be feeling any better about things this winter.
Two years ago, questions were raised regarding how the newly private deCODE would utilize one of its most noteworthy assets: it’s database of genetic and other personal health information about Icelandic citizens. Those questions are likely to resurface now, as Amgen seeks to extract $415 million worth of a company that it bought – at least according to one of deCODE’s owners – in large part for access to deCODE’s data. Expect the usual assurances, but remember that those assurances are only as strong as the paper – and legal framework – upon which they are premised.
Myriad Updates: Clinical Data as Trade Secrets and a Pending Certiorari Decision
Earlier this month, my colleagues John Conley, Robert Cook-Deegan, James Evans and I published a policy article in the European Journal of Human Genetics (EJHG) entitled “The next controversy in genetic testing: clinical data as trade secrets.”
The EJHG article is open access so you can read the entire article at the EJHG website, but here is the abstract:
Big Changes Coming in EU Privacy Law
The European Union is about to make major changes in its privacy law that will have a significant impact on U.S. companies that do even modest amounts of business in Europe. On January 25, 2011, the European Commission (the EU’s executive branch) released a long-awaited Draft Regulation on the Protection of Individuals with Regard to the Processing of Personal Data and on the Free Movement of Such Data (pdf).
While it will likely be a year or more before a final regulation takes effect, and there will almost certainly be amendments along the way, American companies – including those involved in the field of personalized medicine, where personal data is paramount by definition – should start paying attention now, since they may have to change the way that they do business in Europe.
News Roundup: Patent Reform Passes House, Human Provenance Project Pulled by UK
With so many developments at the intersection of genomics and the law, there is often a variety of interesting stories that, for one reason or another, don’t find their way into a full-length posting on the Genomics Law Report. In this post we recap several recent key developments and, at bottom, round up all of the recent tweets from @genomicslawyer.
Patent Reform Legislation Passes House. Several months after the U.S. Senate passed patent reform legislation that would make sweeping changes to America’ patent system, including a switch from a first-to-invent to a first-to-file system for awarding patents, the U.S. House of Representatives finally followed suit yesterday, passing a similar piece of legislation by a vote of 304-117. The version passed by the House, while similar to that passed by the Senate, contained a number of last-minute amendments (pdf).
One change of particular relevance to the personalized medicine community was the removal of a proposed safe harbor for second opinion genetic diagnostic testing, which was replaced by a requirement that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) investigate the relationship between genetic diagnostic tests, gene patents and exclusive licenses. The USPTO would be given nine months to complete its investigation and to return to Congress recommendations for ensuring the availability of second opinion genetic diagnostic testing. (The USPTO study on genetic diagnostic testing was not included in the bill passed by the Senate in March.)
Forensic DNA Fights Terrorism
The big news from the past 24 hours is the death of Osama Bin Laden, which was reported late Sunday evening by President Barack Obama. That’s front page news the world over. But Genomics Law Report readers might be interested to note that DNA appears to have played a significant role in confirming that it was, in fact, Bin Laden who was killed in a shootout with U.S. military forces yesterday in Pakistan.
As reported by The Telegraph earlier today, Bin Laden’s identity was confirmed by government officials only after they matched DNA taken from the body in Pakistan with DNA extracted from a preserved tissue sample from Bin Laden’s sister, who died of brain cancer several years ago. The identification happened rapidly, but, according to Christie Wilcox in a guest post at Scientific American, that’s not all that surprising. Wilcox outlines, step by step, how such an ID could have easily occurred in under 5 hours.
We have covered the use of forensic DNA techniques numerous times here at the GLR, and regular readers know identification through partial or familial DNA matching is not without both social and scientific critics. However, lest there be any doubt, CNN reports that the Obama administration used several methods, including facial recognition and eyewitness corroboration, to positively identify Bin Laden.
Weekly Roundup: UK Insurance Genetics Moratorium Renewed & Breast Cancer Patents, Research in the News
With so many developments at the intersection of genomics and the law, there is often a variety of interesting stories that, for one reason or another, don’t find their way into a full-length posting on the Genomics Law Report. In this post we recap several recent key developments and, at bottom, round up all of the recent tweets from @genomicslawyer.
UK Insurers Continue Moratorium on Predictive Genetic Tests. In 2008 the United States passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). Title I of GINA prohibits health insurers from using genetic information to deny coverage or to set premiums or payment rates. Title II of GINA addresses the use and misuse of genetic information by employers. In the United Kingdom, which provides universal health coverage through the government-funded National Health Service (NHS), discussion of genetic nondiscrimination has largely focused on the employment context (see, e.g., the 2009 report on Genomic Medicine from the House of Lords). To date, however, the United Kingdom has not enacted a formal prohibition on the use of genetic information by either employers or insurers.
Weekly Roundup: Science Funding, DTC and Medical Device Caucusing
With so many developments at the intersection of genomics and the law, there are often a variety of interesting stories that, for one reason or another, don’t find their way into a full-length posting on the Genomics Law Report. Here we recap several recent key developments and, at bottom, round up all of the recent tweets from @genomicslawyer.
The Continuing Threat of Decreased Science Funding. At least for the moment, the two houses of Congress appear, finally, to be edging toward a budget compromise that would bridge the $51 billion gap between the House bill (which passed at the beginning of March) and the most recent Senate proposal. That’s a good thing, given that the current continuing resolution is set to expire on April 8.
Nevertheless, it seems increasingly clear that federal science funding is unlikely to increase from its fiscal year 2010 levels, and funding almost certainly will not meet the targets President Obama set in his FY 2012 budget proposal.
How Will Myriad Respond to the Next Generation of BRCA Testing?
Robert Cook-Deegan contributed to this commentary. Dr. Cook-Deegan is Director of the Center for Genome Ethics, Law & Policy at Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy’s and is currently on leave at the Fondation Brocher in Hermance, Switzerland.
The past few months have brought a number of significant research and commercial developments in the BRCA diagnostic testing market, particularly in Europe. These developments have been met by enigmatic comments from the management of Myriad Genetics, the sole provider of commercial BRCA diagnostic testing in the United States and a defendant in ongoing and closely-scrutinized gene patent litigation. What can these recent developments tell us about Myriad’s future plans in both Europe and the U.S.?
The Next Generation of BRCA Testing. Myriad’s current BRCA diagnostic test, BRACAnalysis (pdf), uses a combination of two traditional technologies—Sanger sequencing and PCR—to identify mutations associated with a significant risk of breast cancer and/or ovarian cancer in the BRCA1 and BRAC2 genes. Although Myriad has dabbled with next-generation sequencing technologies, Myriad has yet to announce any concrete plans to apply any of the increasingly numerous and powerful next-generation sequencing technologies to its BRACAnalysis testing.
Others, however, are moving rapidly in exactly this direction.
More News on DNA in Forensics
We recently noted that DNA profiling has greater public approval in the UK than in America. The UK presently operates the largest DNA database in the world with over 5 million profiles. Nevertheless, that country has just taken a giant step in the opposite direction. New civil liberties legislation, dubbed “the freedom bill,” will require authorities to remove hundreds of thousands of unconvicted people from the database, following a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights that “the blanket retention of DNA from people arrested but never convicted of any offence [i]s unlawful.” There are 1.1 million people without convictions presently profiled in the database; however, some of these profiles will not be removed as a result of an exception for “unconvicted terror suspects who have been released.”
Here in the U.S., the Supreme Court will consider the post-conviction DNA testing landscape in the Texas case of Henry Skinner. Thousands of convicts are requesting new DNA testing in light of the increasing number of exonerations based on DNA evidence. Skinner was convicted 15 years ago of murdering his girlfriend and her two developmentally disabled adult sons. At the recommendation of his attorneys, he declined DNA testing for his trial. Texas courts said he doesn’t currently qualify under a state law that grants DNA testing to some convicts, and federal courts refused to overrule Texas. The last time the Supreme Court considered this issue, in 2009, a divided court decided to let Congress and the state legislatures make the rules. Therefore, rules vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as to how requests for post-conviction DNA testing are handled. Perhaps this time the Supreme Court will decide to lay down some firmer ground rules.
Recent Developments in Forensic DNA
The use of DNA in forensics continues to expand. Last year, James Cass reviewed the current system of forensic DNA profiling in the U.S., including CODIS (the Combined DNA Index System, the FBI’s integrated DNA profiling program), the controversial practice of partial/familial searching, and calls from President Obama and others to collect DNA profiles for all Americans in a national database. He posted follow-up pieces focused on advance DNA collection under Katie’s Law, the growing backlog of DNA samples, and familial DNA database searching, which gained support after it facilitated the arrest of the elusive serial killer in California known as the Grim Sleeper.
A number of newer developments have caught our attention.
