UWS visits Intellectual Ventures in Seattle

UWS Innovation dropped in to Seattle to Intellectual Ventures (IV) headquarters while in the US this month. It may be wet, cold and grey in Seattle, but the blossom trees outside the IV building believe it is Spring – beautiful.

UWS has a signed agreement with IV to jointly develop new inventions, and it was fascinating to see the depth and breadth of the undertaking based in Seattle. Having been established for a number of years, IV now has 800 people across its various teams and in addition to its US headquarters, has a footprint in 8 other countries, including Australia.

The tour of the separate IV laboratory was a real eye opener, focused on some fascinating global good projects utilising Bill Gates foundation funding. The photo above of Nicole Bates from IV with Michael Manion of Invention Evaluator (Australia) who toured the facility with me, shows a prototype in the Cold Chain project. This project aims to solve the cold chain problem of maintaining the viability of vaccines being delivered into underdeveloped countries, many of which struggle to deliver vaccines which are still useful at the point of injection.

IV’s co-founder, Nathan Myhrvold, also produced a significant sized “cook book” which takes a very different scientific look at food and cooking equipment to your usual food technologist or domestic chef. This book, “Modernist Cuisine” took 4 lbs of ink to print! Fiona Cameron, Ass. Director of UWS Innovation and Michael Manion are picture at the test kitchen with 2 of the experimental chefs.

UWS researchers who are interested in finding out more about our relationship with IV should contact UWS Innovation on ip@uws.edu.au.

ARC Success at UWS

UWS has been awarded 10 Discovery
Project grants and 2 of the inaugural
Discovery Early Career Researcher
Awards, Dr Emma Waterton, Centre for
Cultural Research and Dr Jason Shaw,
MARCS Auditory Laboratories. With
grants valued at $3,635,788 million,
UWS continues its top 20 position in
this scheme and has moved to 16th in
the sector (out of 40) up from a ranking
of 21st on 2011 dollars awarded.
UWS has also been awarded 2 Future
Fellowships, Dr Paolo Bubbio and
Dr Philip de Chazal, with funding of
$1.47 million over four years.

Newly recruited UWS researchers have

also been successful with Discovery

grants totalling $0.290 million and our

researchers have also achieved success

in collaboration with other universities.

UWS researchers have also achieved

success in collaboration with other

universities, including with research

infrastructure, equipment and facilities

funding under the Linkage Infrastructure,

Equipment and Facilities scheme.

Nationally, the ARC has awarded $236
million under the Discovery Project
scheme following consideration of 3544
applications with 778 grants awarded:
a national success rate of 21.95%.
Congratulations to our excellent
UWS researchers, the Research
Grants and Development Team within
Research Services and Research
Program Coordinators in our
Research Centres and Institutes.

Gene patenting controversy reaches the Australian Federal Court

A controversial patent over a common genetic mutation is accused of being tantamount to privatisation of the human body. This is the argument being put forward by lawyers representing patient advocacy group Cancer Voices who, for the first time in Australia, are asking the Federal Court to decide if patents granted over segments of DNA are valid.

The US biotech company Myriad Genetics and the exclusive Australian licensee, Genetic Technologies, have a monopoly right to control the use of the BRCA1 mutation sequence (linked to breast cancer) for commercial R&D as well as diagnostic testing. It was granted on the basis that the process of isolating the gene from the human body in a laboratory constituted an "invention". It is worth noting that patenting gives no rights to genes inside the human body.

However, Cancer Voices claim that the key characteristic of the gene mutation relevant to the test – its ability to code for particular proteins – is identical inside the body and out, and should thus not be patentable. The spark for this case being brought before the courts began when the licensee sought to assert its patent rights over a number of public laboratories who were effectively performing the patented breast cancer diagnostic test “in-house” and without paying for a license.

Early last year, UWS Innovation prepared a submission to the Senate Inquiry on behalf of the S7 group of Universities, as did many other research bodies, arguing against a private members bill seeking to restrict the patenting of genes and other biological material. We argued then, and still believe, that restricting the ability to patent biological materials, including isolated genes, would have far-reaching and unintended consequences across the biotechnology industry, impacting on the development and ultimately the generation of diagnostics, novel therapies, tests, vaccines and drug delivery platforms while not solving the issue at hand.

UWS researchers who have questions on how this could affect their research should contact UWSI on ip@uws.edu.au