WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, NODAR KHERKHEULIDZE
The US Supreme Court heard arguments this week in a patent trial that could change the nature of personalized medicine. The case involves pharmaceutical and diagnostic company Prometheus Laboratories, which filed patents on instructions for monitoring the levels of certain metabolites in the red blood cells of patients with Crohn's disease and other gastrointestinal autoimmune disorders to optimize drug dosing. The case made it to the country’s highest court after Prometheus sued Mayo Collaborative Services in 2004 for trying to market its own version of the test.
At the heart of the matter is whether the correlation between blood test results and patient health is patentable. According to patent law, "observation of a natural phenomenon" is not patentable, while "application of an observation of a ...
