The patent trap? Open science advocates want CRISPR technology to be free

They lined up early Monday morningfor ringside seats at the most sensational scientific showdown in the modern era.

The moment the doors opened, lawyers, reportersand hedge fund investors raced for a spot in the cramped, windowless U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Va.

The tension in the room was electric, as thehistoricfight for the patent rights to the CRISPR gene editing technology got underway.

CRISPR(Clustered RegularlyInterspacedShort Palindromic Repeats) is arevolutionary gene editing tool that allowsscientists to edit DNA with unparalleled ease and precision. Two prominent public institutions MITand Harvard'sBroad Institute and University of California Berkeley are locked in a legal cage match, fighting toprivatizeCRISPR.

It could be months before a victor emerges, but the winner will walk away with billions of dollars in licensing fees and total control overone of the world's most important scientific discoveries.

But what if there was no singlewinner? What if there was no fight?

What if CRISPR was offered up free to the world, unencumbered by licenses or restrictions, open to allto advance the health of humanity?

Publicly funded science

If it were up to Aled Edwards at the University of Toronto, that's what would happen.Watching theCRISPRfight from Toronto, Edwards just shakes his head.

"It's a terrible situation, in my opinion," Edwards said. "By filing patents and inhibiting corporations from using it, what they'vedone is dramatically slowed down discovery, slowed down the uptake of technology, slowed down its ability to make cures."

Edwards has been advocating forpublicly funded science in Torontofor more than a decade.He's already given away volumes of scientific data and many chemicals and molecules that could become future drugs.

It's a radical approach to public sector research atthe StructuralGenomicsConsortium, where he heads a group of 300 scientists funded by the Universityof Toronto and other public and private sector organizations.

I think being open will accelerate discovery and it's the important thing to do with public money.- Dr. Guy Rouleau, director, Montreal Neurological Institute

It's not the only Canadian experiment in open science.

At the Montreal Neurological Institute atMcGillUniversity, they'realso giving their science away.

The 60 researchers there have sworn off patentingtheir research into neurological disorders including ALS, Parkinson's diseaseand glioma brain tumours.

"The overall guiding principle is not open for the sake of 'open,' but whatever is necessary to find new treatments more rapidly for diseases," said Dr. GuyRouleau, director of the institute.

"I think being open will accelerate discovery and it's the important thing to do with public money."

Pressure to patent

For decades, governments and universities have pressured academic researchers to patenteverything they discover.

But at the Montreal Neurological Institute, they realizedthat almost none of their patents have generated any value over the long term.

The original purpose of patenting discoveries at universities was not to generate revenue, Edwards said.It was to get the discoveries out there, so they could be developed into technologies and medicines that would benefit society.

CRISPRdidn't need any help in this respect. It was immediately picked up by laboratories around the world.

"Thisis really a case where patents did nothing to provide incentive. It only creates uncertainty," saidMcGilllaw professor Richard Gold.

Who wins?

Using the CRISPR-Cas9 system,scientists can already alter plants and animals in dramatic ways, wiping out malaria mosquitos, creating designer livestock and developingnewtherapies for cancer and other diseases.

• CRISPR used in human trial as cancer treatment
• CRISPR has scientists both thrilled and nervous

But most commercialization is on hold until U.S. patent officialsdecide who gets to claim the multi-billion-dollar patent.

In one corner, there's Harvard and MIT's Broad Institute, where scientist Feng Zhang was the first to file patents usingCRIPSR to edit eukaryote cells (that is, cells that have a nucleus, such as human cells).

In the other corner is the University of California, Berkeley, withscientist Jennifer Doudna claiming she discovered CRISPR for usein all types of plant, animal and bacterial cells, before Zhangfiled his patent papers.

This week,lawyers for both sides appeared in U.S. patentcourt for the firstand only publichearing. Everyone is waiting for the final decision, which isexpected in a couple of months.

The current fight is over U.S. patent rights, which will last for 20 years. But there will be similar patents issued in Canada, the European Union and Australia.

'There's still cause for concern'

While they're waiting for the decision, academic researchers have been allowed to usethe CRISPR technology.

"But there's still causefor concern there," said Tania Bubela, professor of public health at the University of Alberta.

"It's blurry what's pure research and commercial research," she said. "They're still locking up a lot of activity in the research domain."

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Edwards argues the entire history of patenting in academic research has slowed discovery.For evidence, he points to a study by MIT economist Heidi Williams.

To test the theory that patents generate economic activity, Williams compared two sets of genes, one patented and one patent-free. Herconclusion? The patents reduced scientific research and product development by up to 30 per cent.

"We've ascribed to a belief that the way science and the economy advances is to keep things secret, raise money, start little companies and sell them," Edwards said.

"I would argue our progress has not been that impressive."

A brief history of giveawaydiscoveries

There is precedent for major scientific discoveries to be patent-free.

For example, there's theNobel Prize-winning discovery of monoclonal antibodies by scientists at the UK Medical Research Council in1975.

Jonas Salk released the polio vaccine, patent-free, famously asking, "Can you patent the sun?"

Neither James Watson nor Francis Crick even attempted to patent the structure of DNA in 1953. Watson later protested against efforts to patent humangenes, a practicethat was later banned by the U.S. Supreme Court.