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Novel test for mad cow disease fuels patent dispute
Local firm says inventor signed off on rights
Duncan Thorne, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Friday, July 21, 2006
Canada
EDMONTON - An Edmonton company is confident it has a cheap, ground-breaking test for mad cow disease.
But the test's British inventor -- who claims to have first made the link between BSE and the disease's human form -- insists he still holds the rights.
Edmonton's BSE Prion Solutions Inc. is just as firm that inventor Harash Narang, from Newcastle, England, signed away those rights three years ago.
"We've talked with patent attorneys in London and also in Newcastle," Ron Arnold of BSE Prion said. "Everyone agrees that the documents and the transfer of ownership of the patents was done judiciously and was extremely well put together by the solicitors."
Narang, speaking from Newcastle, acknowledged signing papers, but said it was not clear what he was signing. He said he's the one who continues to pay the patent renewal fees.
Despite their differences, Narang and BSE Prion agree the test holds amazing potential to quickly and inexpensively test live cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy -- better known as mad cow disease.
The only approved tests so far for mad cow and its human equivalent depend on removing brain samples after death. A test on live animals would open the way to guaranteeing disease-free herds.
Narang, a former British government scientist who went public about human risks from BSE in 1990, started developing tests for detecting the disease in the late 1980s while at a public health laboratory.
He had been studying cases of a fatal but rare human brain illness, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or CJD, when he started noticing some cases were different.
He has said he was well on the way to establishing a link between BSE and the unusual CJD cases when he was ordered to stop his research. He has also claimed officials rejected his calls for increased testing for BSE and the new form of CJD, now known as variant CJD.
He developed three diagnostic tests, including an early version of the urine test that BSE Prion Solutions intends to bring to market.
A wide-ranging 1998 inquiry into Britain's response to the mad cow crisis found problems with Narang's claims. It cited evidence that fellow scientists could not get his test to work.
Even so, Narang continued development of the urine test. A British company, Biotec Global, sponsored much of his work. He is no longer part of the research, but work on it continues, at the United States National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
Edmonton's Arnold, a partner in Biotec, said Harang gave Biotec the patent rights in 2003 and it in turn gave Edmonton's BSE Prion the licence for the Americas and Europe.
Biotec has sunk more than $2 million into the research but BSE Prion has not had to pay a licence fee, Arnold said. That's because the project is humanitarian, with plans to hand over any earnings for research purposes, in the form of grants and scholarships.
Narang, who holds shares in Biotec Global despite the ownership dispute, also said he also wants any profits to go into further research. Meanwhile, he added, he's owed back pay and expenses for work he did over the past five years -- a claim Arnold rejects.
The key issue is whether the test is effective.
"We have a test that not only works, but works each and every time," Arnold said. All it needs is formal validation, which may take up to two years, and the acceptance of regulators.
Narang and Case Western researchers reported in 2005 that the urine test could reliably detect a harmless form of the prion protein that is blamed for BSE and variant CJD. It could also detect the bad form -- if the prion was first added directly to the urine.
They said their findings "may lay the foundation for a future technique," if in fact the bad prion can turn up naturally in urine.
"It needs a lot of work still," Ayuna Dagdanova, one of the test's researchers at the U.S. prion surveillance centre, said from Cleveland.
Without solid data it's not possible to say if they are close to detecting BSE in urine, she said.
"No one actually knows.
"But preliminary experiments show the possibility."
Source: The Edmonton Journal
canada.com
Local firm says inventor signed off on rights
Duncan Thorne, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Friday, July 21, 2006
Canada
EDMONTON - An Edmonton company is confident it has a cheap, ground-breaking test for mad cow disease.
But the test's British inventor -- who claims to have first made the link between BSE and the disease's human form -- insists he still holds the rights.
Edmonton's BSE Prion Solutions Inc. is just as firm that inventor Harash Narang, from Newcastle, England, signed away those rights three years ago.
"We've talked with patent attorneys in London and also in Newcastle," Ron Arnold of BSE Prion said. "Everyone agrees that the documents and the transfer of ownership of the patents was done judiciously and was extremely well put together by the solicitors."
Narang, speaking from Newcastle, acknowledged signing papers, but said it was not clear what he was signing. He said he's the one who continues to pay the patent renewal fees.
Despite their differences, Narang and BSE Prion agree the test holds amazing potential to quickly and inexpensively test live cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy -- better known as mad cow disease.
The only approved tests so far for mad cow and its human equivalent depend on removing brain samples after death. A test on live animals would open the way to guaranteeing disease-free herds.
Narang, a former British government scientist who went public about human risks from BSE in 1990, started developing tests for detecting the disease in the late 1980s while at a public health laboratory.
He had been studying cases of a fatal but rare human brain illness, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or CJD, when he started noticing some cases were different.
He has said he was well on the way to establishing a link between BSE and the unusual CJD cases when he was ordered to stop his research. He has also claimed officials rejected his calls for increased testing for BSE and the new form of CJD, now known as variant CJD.
He developed three diagnostic tests, including an early version of the urine test that BSE Prion Solutions intends to bring to market.
A wide-ranging 1998 inquiry into Britain's response to the mad cow crisis found problems with Narang's claims. It cited evidence that fellow scientists could not get his test to work.
Even so, Narang continued development of the urine test. A British company, Biotec Global, sponsored much of his work. He is no longer part of the research, but work on it continues, at the United States National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
Edmonton's Arnold, a partner in Biotec, said Harang gave Biotec the patent rights in 2003 and it in turn gave Edmonton's BSE Prion the licence for the Americas and Europe.
Biotec has sunk more than $2 million into the research but BSE Prion has not had to pay a licence fee, Arnold said. That's because the project is humanitarian, with plans to hand over any earnings for research purposes, in the form of grants and scholarships.
Narang, who holds shares in Biotec Global despite the ownership dispute, also said he also wants any profits to go into further research. Meanwhile, he added, he's owed back pay and expenses for work he did over the past five years -- a claim Arnold rejects.
The key issue is whether the test is effective.
"We have a test that not only works, but works each and every time," Arnold said. All it needs is formal validation, which may take up to two years, and the acceptance of regulators.
Narang and Case Western researchers reported in 2005 that the urine test could reliably detect a harmless form of the prion protein that is blamed for BSE and variant CJD. It could also detect the bad form -- if the prion was first added directly to the urine.
They said their findings "may lay the foundation for a future technique," if in fact the bad prion can turn up naturally in urine.
"It needs a lot of work still," Ayuna Dagdanova, one of the test's researchers at the U.S. prion surveillance centre, said from Cleveland.
Without solid data it's not possible to say if they are close to detecting BSE in urine, she said.
"No one actually knows.
"But preliminary experiments show the possibility."
Source: The Edmonton Journal
canada.com