Update: The NIH sent a response to our comments, available here. The response fails to address the glaring lack of information available regarding Retargeted Therapeutics.
On June 8, 2020, Knowledge Ecology International and the Union for Affordable Cancer Treatment (UACT) submitted joint comments regarding the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) “Prospective Grant of an Exclusive Patent License: Antibody-Based Therapy for the Treatment of CD20 Expressing Lymphomas.” The worldwide, exclusive, prospective license was noticed in the Federal Register (85 FR 31193) and the field of use is for the “use of anti-C3d monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to potentiate anti-tumor activity of anti-CD20 mAbs for the treatment of B-cell lymphomas.”
The licensee is Retargeted Therapeutics, which the Federal Register notice states is registered in Delaware. Retargeted Therapeutics is not listed in the online database of businesses registered in Delaware, has no website, nor any other online presence. In addition to other questions about the license, KEI asked basic information about the company, such as who were the principals of Retargeted Therapeutics? The NIH did not provide this information prior to the comment deadline, and has failed to respond to our further requests for this information.
How can the public be assured as to the capacity of Retargeted Therapeutics to successfully commercialize the invention when it has no history of bringing drugs to market, its principal officers are not disclosed online, and it has no social media presence?
KEI’s full comments regarding the prospective exclusive license are available here: KEI_UACT_Comments_NIH_Exclusive_License_Retargeted_Therapeutics_8June2020
(For more KEI comments on NIH licenses, see: https://www.keionline.org/nih-licenses)