Myriad Genetics: In the eye of the policy storm

Abstract

The molecular diagnostics cost of revenue for the third quarter was $8.3 million, compared to $7.6 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2007. This 9% increase on 55% revenue growth is due in part to the technology improvements and efficiency gains that the Company has made in its molecular diagnostics laboratory.The gross profit margin on the Company's molecular diagnostics business was 86% for the three months ended March 31, 2008, compared with an 80% gross profit margin from the same three month period in 2007.Net operating income for the Company's molecular diagnostics business increased to $27.7 million, a 47% net operating margin, in the third quarter of fiscal 2008. This result compares to $16.2 million, a 43% net operating margin, in the third quarter of fiscal 2007, representing a 71% increase in net operating profit."We continue to see strong topline and bottom-line growth in our molecular diagnostics business," said Peter Meldrum, President and Chief Executive Officer of Myriad Genetics, Inc. "We are equally pleased with the progress we are making on the therapeutic side of the Company. We have completed the Phase 3 clinical trial of Flurizan ® in Alzheimer's disease and look forward to announcing the results in the near future."

Transparency tools in gene patenting for informing policy and practice

“…We have carried out a survey of patent offices ( Table 2 and Supplementary Table 1) to ascertain the standards and practices regarding the patentability of nucleotide and aminoacid sequences. Between July and October 2011, we mailed 55 patent offices around the world a series of questions modeled on those from the 2001 survey conducted by the World in many countries, including within Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan 31 . In addition to providing more precise analytic tools, with the increasingly globalized markets and innovation, there is now an urgent need for shared, harmonized data to guide decision-making and to accommodate differences in patent practice and policy in diverse jurisdictions.…”

Supreme Court to Myriad Genetics: Synthetic DNA is Patentable but Isolated Genes Are Not

“…The early 1990s were marked by intense international research on the genetic foundations of breast cancer [2]. In 1990, a research group at the University of California at Berkeley announced that they had located a gene on chromosome 17 that provided the first evidence of the connection between certain genetic variations and breast cancer [3].…”

Breast Cancer Gene Research and Medical Practices

“…Although not traditionally viewed as satisfying this threshold requirement, many kinds of living matter are now considered to be eligible, and as a consequence patents have intruded on the field of human genetics as well. This intrusion has not gone unnoticed and has led to a 'policy storm' (Gold and Carbone 2010) surrounding the desirability of human gene patents since the late 1980s.…”

“…Myriad accumulated sufficient patent rights to create a service monopoly in the US, but it did not achieve that level of dominance in any other jurisdiction. It also made a number of commercialization decisions that did not sit well within the research community (Baldwin and Cook-Deegan 2013, Gold and Carbone 2010, Parthasarathy 2007.…”