ILLUSTRATION BY FRANZISKA BARCZYK FOR SPECTRUMA new patent on variants in an autism gene is unlikely to hold up in court, some experts say, but may still hamper research.
In December, LabCorp, a healthcare diagnostics company in Burlington, North Carolina, received a patent that appears to cover any test that can identify three variants in the gene HOMER1. The patent relates to the testing of these variants to signal an increase in autism risk in a child or fetus.
But the patent might also allow LabCorp to charge a licensing fee to any scientists who wish to sequence HOMER1 in people who may have autism.
The existence of the patent could pose a roadblock to anyone who finds variants in HOMER1 in their sequencing projects or includes HOMER1 among a panel of several genes linked to autism.
The patent revives a debate that many scientists hoped was behind them. In 2013, in response to ...
