After Another Legal Setback on BRCA Testing, Myriad Considers Other Options
Myriad Genetics is continuing to legally duke it out with some of its competitors in breast and ovarian cancer genetic testing, but it is appearing increasingly likely that it will have to accept that the space will be crowded for the foreseeable future. A federal appeals court in Utah ruled in December that three patents held by Myriad for BRCA testing (it markets its own test as BRACA) should never have been issued in the first place, as they covered products that weren’t eligible for legal protection. The appellate ruling follows on a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that barred companies from holding patents on single genes. That effectively opened up the market for BRCA testing, meaning Myriad’s $4,000 list price for the test could be undercut by other labs. However, Myriad sued two of its would-be competitors, Ambry Genetics Corp. and Pathway Genomics, claiming their sequencing processes infringed on its existing patents. The decision issued last month involved the Ambry lawsuit. It not only upheld a trial court’s decision to permit Ambry to continue marketing its own BRCA test, but went beyond the question originally posed and invalidated the patents Myriad had held. Myriad said it was disappointed in […]
Subscribe to view Essential
Start a Free Trial for immediate access to this article