UC, MIT Battle Over Patent to Gene-Editing Tool
By Lisa M. Krieger,
San Jose Mercury News
| 05. 09. 2015
Will the University of California reap the financial rewards of CRISPR's commercial use, likely worth billions of dollars? That's the source of a bitter fight.
In June 2012, UC Berkeley's Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, now a professor in Germany, showed how bacteria's natural defense system could be turned into a "gene editing" tool to cut DNA strands.
Seven months later, Feng Zhang of the Massachsuetts Institute of Technology, along with Harvard's George Church, showed that the tool also works in human cells.
UC and Doudna filed for a patent first. But in a shocking turn of events, MIT and Zhang won last month, earning the patent that covers use of CRISPR in every species except bacteria, including humans.
MIT paid extra to expedite Zhang's patent application. MIT and Zhang also assert that the patent belongs to them because Doudna didn't prove it works in human cells, only bacterial cells.
Zhang also submitted photos of lab notebooks showing his lab work was ahead of Doudna's.
UC and Doudna are fighting back, submitting thousands of pages of documentation to support their...
Related Articles
Since the “CRISPR babies” scandal in 2018, no additional genetically modified babies are known to have been born. Now several techno-enthusiastic billionaires are setting up privately funded companies to genetically edit human embryos, with the explicit intention of creating genetically modified children.
Heritable genome editing remains prohibited by policies in the overwhelming majority of countries that have any relevant policy, and by a binding European treaty. Support for keeping it legally off limits is widespread, including among scientists...
By Ed Cara, Gizmodo | 06.22.2025
In late May, several scientific organizations, including the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy (ISCT), banded together to call for a 10-year moratorium on using CRISPR and related technologies to pursue human heritable germline editing. The declaration also outlined...
By Elise Kinsella, ABC News | 06.15.2025
When *Sarah and her partner needed fertility testing, it was Monash IVF that the pair turned to.
"Having a quick browse online, Monash IVF was one of the most prominent ones that came up on Google search and after contacting...
By Tory Shepherd, The Guardian | 06.13.2025
IVF is “big business” and experts are concerned about conflicts of interest between profit-making and helping families have children.
Monash IVF’s second embryo bungle has sparked renewed scrutiny on the IVF industry as a whole amid calls for national regulation...
