Contrary to popular belief, a mouse can actually cause a stir. And in the case of the Alzheimer’s Institute of America against Penn, it’s a transgenic mouse containing nucleic acid encoding that’s causing the uproar.
Last November, AIA filed a lawsuit against the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania and drug company Avid Radiopharmaceuticals for performing a decade-long string of tests on one of AIA’s patented strains of mutated mice without its consent.
On Aug. 31, the presiding judge — Timothy Savage of the Pennsylvania Eastern District Court — decided against a quick settlement in favor of a jury trial. According to Bob Firestone, the Penn lawyer handling the case, the University welcomes the development since “Penn requested it.”
AIA claims in the suit that Penn and Avid knew about the patent before they ran the battery of tests and that doing so for commercial or monetary reasons is illegal. Yet according to Firestone, the tests were simply Penn researchers doing academic research on campus.
“Certain researchers studied Alzheimer’s disease, used mouse models in their academic research and one of the mouse models is bred to have a certain mutation,” Firestone said. “What AIA says is that they own a patent covering the use of one kind of [genetically engineered] model.”
The mouse strain in question, “Tg2576,” shows symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and thus is preferred for Alzheimer’s research. Penn, in collaboration with Avid, has been working on new approaches for diagnosing Alzheimer’s.
The case hasn’t gone to trial yet because the two parties have been conducting discovery — the pretrial exchange of research, evidence and depositions under oath.
This stage has focused on the two preliminary questions assigned by Savage. The first question is one of inventorship — is the plaintiff named the sole inventor of the patent? The second one is of ownership — does AIA own the patent? According to court documents, there are factual disputes over these questions.
Firestone said the trial should only last about a week, depending on how many witnesses each side calls.
But regardless of the outcome, he believes the lawsuit shouldn’t have a major impact on the Penn community.
“The only thing that could happen is if Penn lost the lawsuit, students and faculty that do research might have to use other mice,” Firestone said. The other possibility would be that AIA would authorize Penn to keep using the Tg2576 strain.
There are hundreds of thousands of transgenic mice strains. Firestone commented that the Alzheimer’s studies in question required particular mice.
AIA’s attorneys could not be reached for further comment while the litigation is still pending.
