On August 14, 2020, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) and the Union for Affordable Cancer Treatment (UACT) submitted comments to the NIH’s “Prospective Grant of an Exclusive Patent License: Allogeneic Therapy Using Chimeric Antigen Receptors Targeting GPC3” (85 FR 45912). The technology to be licensed is for the treatment of GPC3-expressing human cancers, which is a protein expressed on the cell surface of several types of solid tumors, including liver cancers, ovarian cancers, and neuroblastomas.
The CAR-related technology is to be licensed to Cytovia Therapeutics, based in New York, NY per the Federal Register notice. The NIH refused to answer basic questions related to the company set to receive the license, such as “Can you tell us who owns the company?” The NIH’s continued lack of transparency as they continue to hand out inventions to private companies is unwarranted, and severely undermines the public’s codified right to comment on the proposed licenses.
KEI and UACT’s full comments on the license are available here: KEI_UACT_Comments_NIH_License_Cytovia_14Aug2020
(For more KEI comments on NIH licenses, see: https://www.keionline.org/nih-licenses)