here’s some of it...
“are escalating in the long-running dispute between two major groups over the research and rights to Crispr, a biological system that has been adapted to easily edit the genes of animals, plants and people.
A group including University of California, the University of Vienna and researcher Emmanuelle Charpentier said on Wednesday that it seeks to overturn a patent decision related to the best-known Crispr system, Crispr-cas9.
That decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board protected Crispr-cas9 patents issued to the Broad Institute, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology against a challenge by the California group.
Separately, scientists from the Broad, MIT and Harvard reported in the journal Science on Thursday that they adapted a different Crispr system, Crispr-cas13a, to create a diagnostic tool that can detect a range of viruses, bacteria and other medical information.
Some of the same scientists involved in the Crispr-cas9 dispute are also inventors of Crispr-cas13a diagnostic tools and have filed for patents on that use as well. The two systems use different enzymes.
The events of this week highlight the tensions that can emerge when trying to determine where transformative ideas come from in science, particularly when scientific prestige or potential financial rewards are also at stake.
The Broad group in announcing its new diagnostics system specifically noted the work of Jennifer Doudna, a professor at UC Berkeley who has done research in both systems, saying the Broad’s cas13a work “is a million-fold more sensitive” than Dr. Doudna’s.
Dr. Doudna in emails said the new tool “combines two previously reported methods,” one by her group, and improves the ability of detection but “could be challenging to scale” commercially.
In the case of Crispr-cas9, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment have flowed into startups seeking to use the gene-editing system to develop therapeutics and cures for disease. As the patent dispute drags on, it is unclear whether the companies will have to license the technology from both sides.......”