Big pharma companies lag behind public bodies for patent filings in personalized medicine

Public research organizations are driving advances in research into genome-related technologies and their use in medicine and industry, with the private sector lagging behind, according to research by leading international intellectual property firm Marks & Clerk in its Life Sciences Report 2014: Genome 2.0, today at the BIO International Convention 2014 in San Diego.

The research further highlights the global disparity, with the advantage almost entirely enjoyed by the USA, whilst Europe and Asia trail behind, despite over 1 billion euros ($1.37 billion) of public funding coming from the European Union for research into personalized medicine between 2007 and 2012. The report looks at intellectual property trends in the genome market over the past decade since the completion of the human genome in 2003. The research has revealed that areas of personalized medicine and synthetic biology are showing commercial promise, though public organizations outnumbered private organizations among the top filers of patent applications related to these fields. Meanwhile, in the more mature sequencing technology market, established private organizations outpace public entities, with past disruptive technologies such as next generation sequencing having become standard practice and new disruptive technologies emerging that can further challenge the status quo.

The report found that innovation in Europe is driven by relatively few organizations, including Swiss drug major Roche (ROG: SIX) and French public research bodies CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and INSERM (Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale).