Academics Win Patent Rights

A judge says that government and university labs have to share the patent rights to the successful cancer drug Velcade.

Written byJef Akst

| 1 min read

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Two University of Kansas researchers should have been included as co-inventors on two patents for the blood cancer drug Velcade, a three-member arbitration panel decided last week. The patents for the drug—which generated $623 million in sales last year, Bloomberg Businessweek reported—are owned by the National Institutes of Health and licensed to the drug’s manufacturer, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, now part of Japanese drugmaker Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., but the Kansas researchers who also worked on the drug filed a lawsuit in 2008 arguing that they should have been included as well.

The panel decided that the drug was the result of a collaboration between Kansas researchers Valentino Stella and Wanda Waugh and National Cancer Institute researcher Shanker Gupta, so it is unfair that only Gupta is listed ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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