Genetic Testing/Screening
Pigs Return to Earth: Federal Circuit Reinstates Most—But Not All—of Myriad’s Patents
The Federal Circuit’s long-awaited decision (pdf) in Association for Molecular Pathology v. USPTO (the Myriad gene patent litigation) was issued this past Friday. As we were writing, with the economy having slowed to a barely perceptible crawl and a government default looming more likely by the hour, there were plenty of reasons to believe that the sky was falling. But the Myriad decision was not, and is not, one of them.
For the most part, the Federal Circuit’s 2-1 decision returned the law to the state it was in before District Judge Sweet’s opinion turned things upside-down last March. Although full of interesting rhetoric, the court’s three lengthy opinions (a total of 105 pages) are less remarkable for what they decide than for what they invite higher authorities—the Supreme Court and the Congress—to decide down the road.
First, the scorecard. The court’s judgment—that is, the holding, or outcome—was joined by Judges Lourie and Moore. A third member of the panel, Judge Bryson, dissented in part, meaning that he joined only a portion of the judgment (more on that below) and disagreed with another part.
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.)
Prometheus Returns to the Supreme Court, Medical Method Patent Speculation Intensifies
While everyone has been busy speculating about whether the Supreme Court will ultimately take the Myriad case, the justices (at least four of them—see below) sprung a surprise this week by deciding to review the Federal Circuit’s decision in another biomedical patent case, Prometheus v. Mayo.
The patents at issue in Prometheus involve a method of administering a drug (specifically thiopurine drugs used to treat gastrointestinal and other autoimmune diseases), measuring the drug’s level in a patient’s body, and then adjusting the dosage of the drug. The Supreme Court will hear the case this fall and should (see below) issue a ruling by next summer, thus drawing to a close a legal journey that began more than three years ago in a California district court.
Update: Proposed Second Opinion Safe Harbor for Genetic Diagnostic Testing Withdrawn
We reported yesterday on a proposed Patent Act amendment that, if successful, would create a safe harbor for second opinion genetic diagnostic testing. While conceptually simple, the proposed amendment would have left genetic testing developers and providers, patent holders and courts with considerable uncertainty about the safe harbor’s appropriate interpretation and application.
Initially offered by Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) in April, the amendment surfaced again this past week in the Manager’s Amendment to H.R. 1249 (pdf), the House’s attempt at patent reform legislation.
As news of the proposed amendment spread, it generated a flurry of activity on Capitol Hill. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the group largely responsible for coordinating the plaintiffs in the Myriad gene patent litigation, spearheaded the charge. An ACLU-led coalition wrote in opposition to the proposed amendment (pdf), arguing that the proposed second opinion safe harbor “would fail to block all patent holder objections to [second opinion] testing, fails to address the many other limitations on scientific research arising out of the issuance of [gene patents], and risks allowing gene patent holders to argue that Congress implicitly endorses the validity of such patents.” The group was joined in its efforts by the American Medical Association, the Association for Molecular Pathology (the first named plaintiff in Myriad) and others, who collectively lobbied Rep. Wasserman Schultz and her colleagues to avoid creating “unintended harms to patients, medical professionals and genetic researchers.”
DTC Genetic Testing and the FDA: is there an end in sight to the regulatory uncertainty?
Editor’s Note: This was first published at Genomes Unzipped and was co-authored by Daniel MacArthur and Luke Jostins. Genomes Unzipped received 12 free kits from Lumigenix for review purposes, and Dan Vorhaus has provided legal advice to the company. Genomes Unzipped plans to release a full review of the Lumigenix service in early July.
Last month three direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing companies opened their mailboxes to find a slightly ominous but entirely expected letter from the FDA. The three recipients (Lumigenix, American International Biotechnology Services and Precision Quality DNA) received substantively equivalent letters, with the FDA warning each company that its genetic testing service “appears to meet the definition of a device as that term is defined in section 201(h) of the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act,” and that the agency would like to meet with company representatives “to discuss whether the service [they] are promoting requires review by FDA and what information [they] would need to submit in order for [their] product to be legally marketed.”
House Introduces Patent Reform Proposal to Permit Second Opinions in Genetic Diagnostic Testing
When we last checked in on the state of patent reform back in March, the Senate had just passed the America Invents Act (S.23) or, as it is more commonly known, the Patent Reform Act of 2011 (pdf) by an overwhelming 95-5 vote.
Following its passage in the Senate, the legislation promptly stalled in the House of Representatives and, several months and numerous committee hearings later, that is where it remains. Fierce lobbying and political maneuvering have thrown multiple key provisions of the reform legislation into doubt. Leading areas of debate include the constitutionality of a proposed change from a “first-to-invent” to a “first-to-file” patent system and a provision that would allow the patent office to retain user fees to fund its own operations.
While it remains unclear whether patent reform will actually occur, the latest round of legislative wrangling has introduced one proposal of particular interest to Genomics Law Report readers. Among 86 pages of proposed amendments (pdf) to H.R.1249 (the House version of the patent reform legislation) offered earlier this week is a provision that, if adopted, would provide an infringement safe harbor for second opinion genetic diagnostic testing.
Permitting Second Opinions in Certain Genetic Diagnostic Testing. Introduced as part of the Manager’s Amendment (pdf) submitted by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), the proposal is conceptually simple. It would create a new Section 287(d) under the Patent Act to establish a safe harbor for second opinion genetic diagnostic testing providers, much like the safe harbor that already exists at Section 287(c) for medical practitioners’ performance of medical activities.
News Roundup: Perception Gaps and Progress in Personalized Medicine
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.
Personalized Medicine’s Perception Gaps. A new report released this week by the biopharmaceuticals company Quintiles (pdf) examines the perspectives of four key stakeholder groups – biopharma executives (n=200), managed care executives (n=153), physicians (n=503) and patients (n=1,000) – across a wide range of personalized medicine issues.
The report contains a number of interesting statistical nuggets about how these groups perceive their strengths, weaknesses and future role in the advancement of personalized medicine. These include the following:
- Only 44% of biopharmaceutical executives believe that their organization provides “readily available” outcomes data to demonstrate the value of medications;
- Healthcare professionals generally agree (65%) that patients who seek out information on their own achieve better health outcomes, but more than a third (36%) believe that patients are more frequently misinformed than they were five years ago;
- Fewer than half (44%) of doctors surveyed are optimistic that the quality of healthcare will be significantly improved over the coming decade; and
- At least a third of payers (33%) and biopharma execs (38%) believe that personalized medicine will have a negative effect on job and healthcare discrimination (this despite the passage of 2008 legislation (GINA) designed to prevent discrimination on the basis of genetic information in both cases).
Updating the DTC Debate: Trial by Press Release, More FDA Letters, the Problem of Pleiotropy and New RUO Guidance
Later today I will join several colleagues here in Chicago, IL at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting for a panel discussion on Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing for Cancer: What Physicians Need to Know (pdf). (Daniel MacArthur and Misha Angrist will not be on the panel, although each joined us in authoring the pre-conference paper.)
This will, I believe, mark direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing’s formal debut at ASCO. It should also serve as another reminder that, despite its relatively small numbers (both in terms of dollars and customers), DTC genetic testing continues to exert an outsized influence when it comes to conversations about the future of genomic medicine. This is particularly true when the discussion turns to appropriate policy and regulatory oversight.
In advance of ASCO, here are several items of interest from the past few weeks in DTC genetic testing.
Patent Update: Looking Beyond Section 101 and the Continued Murkiness of Method Patents
As the biotechnology community awaits the Federal Circuit’s decision in the Myriad Genetics patent litigation, attention has focused on the fundamental issue in that case: whether genes and methods for interpreting mutations are patentable subject matter under section 101 of the Patent Act—that is, whether they are the kinds of things that can be patented assuming that all of the other requirements of the Patent Act (pdf) are satisfied.
However, we have argued in several articles (see, e.g., here, here and here) that the real action is more likely to involve all of those “other requirements” as courts explore other ways to limit the patentability of scientific and technology progress without altering the threshold test of patentability under section 101.
A recent Federal Circuit case (Billups-Rothenberg, Inc. v. Associated Regional and University Pathologists, Inc.) decided under the written description requirement of section 112 illustrates this point yet again.
Billups v. ARUP Background. The Billups case involves a disorder called Type I hereditary hemochromatosis, which is characterized by excessive absorption of iron. The critical gene in the absorption process is called HFE, or “High Fe.” In 1994, Billups filed the application that led to a patent on methods for testing for hemochromatosis (U.S. patent number 5,674,681; “’681”). The court’s opinion reproduces this claim as “representative”:
New Diagnostic Guidelines and DTC Testing for Alzheimer’s Disease
Last month, the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association issued new diagnostic guidelines that divide Alzheimer’s disease into three distinct stages, reflecting recent evidence that the disease begins to affect the brain years before symptoms become evident. The expanded definition of Alzheimer’s includes two new phases of the disease:
(1) presymptomatic and (2) mildly symptomatic but pre-dementia, along with (3) dementia caused by Alzheimer’s. This reflects current thinking that Alzheimer’s begins creating distinct and measurable changes in the brains of affected people years, perhaps decades, before memory and thinking symptoms are noticeable.
At least for the moment, the new guidelines are intended to be used only with patients enrolled in clinical trials, making them more of a work in progress and not a standardized method of determining disease onset in Alzheimer’s patients.
Federal Alzheimer’s Activity. The revisions to the diagnostic guidelines – the first in nearly three decades – indicate how far scientists have come in understanding the disease and are reflected in new legislation introduced in both the Senate (S.738) and the House (H.R.1386) that would expand Medicare coverage of Alzheimer’s to cover “comprehensive Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis and services,” including for individuals who fall under stage (1) or (2) of the new guidelines.
