Stem Cell Patent Dispute Heats Up

The Korean stem cell research scandal isn’t over yet.

University of Pittsburgh stem cell researcher Gerald Schatten, who co-authored the fraudulent Korean stem cell paper withdrawn last week from Science magazine, filed for a U.S. patent on the technology in mid-2004 without crediting his Korean collaborators, according to a press report out of Pittsburgh over the weekend. Moreover, disgraced Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-Suk did the same thing a few months later, filing for an international patent without mentioning his U.S. co-author.

This latest turn of events in the still unfolding drama suggests Schatten may have had motives beyond ethical concerns when he blew the whistle on how Hwang procured eggs for his embryonic stem cell experiments. Schatten publicly broke with Hwang in mid-November after claiming he’d just learned that Hwang coerced female lab associates to provide eggs. A month later, Hwang’s government-funded science empire collapsed when it was revealed he doctored his results.

But as the press scrambled to cover the emerging scandal, the influential JoongAng Daily in both its Korean and English language editions reported that Schatten had quietly met in San Francisco with Hwang and his lawyer more than a month before the highly-publicized break. At that meeting, which coincided with a California Institute for Regenerative Medicine scientific meeting that Schatten attended, the U.S. researcher demanded a 50 percent share of the Korean patent, which Hwang rejected, according to the report. No U.S. paper has followed up on the story.

Ownership disputes over key stem cell patents have been simmering since the field emerged in the late 1990s. The University of Wisconsin, whose researcher James Thomson used Geron Corp. funding to isolate the first embryonic stem cell lines, charges $100,000 to commercial concerns and $5,000 to academics for access to those lines. It also granted Geron exclusive rights to pursue therapies in the most promising fields. Last May, San Diego-based stem cell researcher Jeanne Loring told Nature magazine her start-up firm collapsed because it couldn’t get access to the Wisconsin patents at reasonable rates.

That was about the time that Hwang announced his alleged breakthrough, which would allow production of individualized embryonic stem cells using far fewer eggs than previous technologies. The state-supported scientist claimed the technology belonged to the Korean government, but at the same time said it would be made readily available to researchers worldwide. “I want to be remembered in history as a pure scientist,” he told the New York Times. “I want this technology applied to the whole of mankind.”

He stuck to his guns after his fraud was exposed. During his December 23rd resignation press conference, Hwang insisted that though the current experiment was tainted, he was still the inventor of the method for generating genetically matched embryonic stem cells, which is likely to become a core technology for an entire industry should stem cells prove therapeutically useful. “Technology for patient-specific embryonic stem cells belongs to South Korea,” he said. “And you will find out that this is true.”

The method involved is known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, a polite way of saying human cloning. Under SCNT, lab workers take a person’s DNA, insert it in donated eggs denuded of their own DNA, and grow the cloned human cells long enough to generate stem cells that genetically match the original DNA donor. The technology will be key to developing personalized cell lines – which should reduce tissue rejection rates – and could be incorporated into a wide range of diagnostic tests.

The Schatten U.S. patent application was filed April 9, 2004, about six months before the two scientists published their first paper together (the May Science paper was their second). It describes a method of cloning humans and using the resulting stem cells in treating “cardiovascular disease, neurological disease, reproductive disorder, cancer, eye disease, endocrine disorder, pulmonary disease, metabolic disorder, autoimmune disorder, and aging.”

Though the patent application contains a “government rights” clause because Schatten’s funding came from the National Institutes of Health, there was no assignee listed on the application. Government-funded research patents are typically assigned to the university or institution where the researcher works. Numerous patent applications in the Patent and Trademark Office’s database list assignees, even though the patent hasn’t yet been granted.

The University of Pittsburgh, which has its own investigation underway, has so far refused to answer questions about the Schatten patent application.

Posted by gooznews at January 8, 2006 09:07 PM