Myriad Genetics of Salt Lake City, UT, and other patent holders filed suit in July against Ambry Genetics of Aliso Viejo, CA, and Gene by Gene of Houston, TX, in U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, alleging infringement of claims covering cDNA and methods of use related to BRCA1 and BRCA2. The two firms added BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing to some test products following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that struck down Myriad's claims related to isolated DNA. Ambry Genetics filed an antitrust counterclaim against Myriad in August.
The NIH reached an agreement with the family of Henrietta Lacks for controlled access by biomedical researchers to whole-genome data on HeLa cells originally created from Lacks's tumor.
An interim analysis of a phase III clinical trial showed that obinutuzumab (GA101; Genentech) plus chlorambucil offered significant improvement in progression-free survival over rituximab (Rituxan; Genentech and Biogen Idec) plus chlorambucil for people with previously untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
Cancer drugmakers Agios Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, MA; bluebird bio, also of Cambridge; OncoMed Pharmaceuticals of Redwood City, CA; and Onconova Therapeutics of Newton, PA, all went public this summer. Foundation Medicine of Cambridge, which offers genomic tests, filed for an initial public offering in July.
National Cancer Institute (NCI) researchers have carried out a comprehensive analysis of coding variants in the NCI-60 panel of cell lines identified by whole-exome sequencing, creating the world's largest data set of cancer-related genetic variations (Cancer Res 2013;73:4372).
In U.S. women diagnosed with breast cancer between 1991 and 2005, the survival gap between blacks and whites persists (JAMA 2013;310:389–97). Researchers suggested that patients' condition at diagnosis, not subsequent treatment, largely accounts for the differences.
Survival rates for patients with HIV-associated lymphoma have not improved in the United States since the adoption of antiretroviral therapies(JNCI 2013 Jul 26. [Epub ahead of print]).
For more news on cancer research, visit Cancer Discovery online at http://CDnews.aacrjournals.org.
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