Are Dutch scientists hampering the fight against a lethal new coronavirus by patenting the virus and making it needlessly difficult for other scientists to study it? Accusations to that effect were flying last week at the World Health Assembly (WHA), the annual meeting of the world's health ministers in Geneva, Switzerland. Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), used strong words in an apparent attack on virologist Ron Fouchier and his colleagues at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
But there is nothing unusual about the arrangement under which Fouchier has shared samples of the virus, several scientists and an intellectual property expert tell ScienceInsider. And so far, nobody has offered concrete examples of how the legal arrangements have slowed down research. The criticism is "completely unjustified," says Christian Drosten, a virologist at the University of Bonn in Germany who has developed diagnostic tests for the virus. "Nothing was blocked."
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Fouchier's group identified the virus, now called Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), in June last year after receiving a sample from Ali Zaki, an Egyptian doctor working at the Dr. Soliman Fakeeh Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
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...the head of Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, as saying that the Rotterdam group had made it hard for others to use the virus. "[T]here was a lot of negotiation and a lot of lawyers involved both with us and the Americans and others around the world," Plummer said, "which slowed things down quite a bit."
On 23 May, Saudi Deputy Health Minister Ziad Memish chimed in at WHA, complaining that intellectual property considerations were slowing down the development of diagnostic tests. "We are still struggling with diagnostics and the reason is that the virus was patented by scientists and is not allowed to be used for investigations by other scientists," Memish was quoted as saying by French press agency AFP. According to the report, he went on to charge that contracts had been signed with vaccine and drug companies, which he said need to give their approval every time another lab wants to use the virus.
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Erasmus MC denied the allegations in a press statement issued on Friday. "Rumours that the Viroscience department of Erasmus MC would hamper research into the MERS coronavirus are clearly wrong and not based on facts," the statement read. Virologist Ab Osterhaus, who heads the department, says that he doesn't understand the controversy. "We have given this virus to virtually any lab that has asked for it," Osterhaus says.
Erasmus MC has applied for a patent on "use of the sequence and host receptor data" because without patents, companies would never invest in making diagnostics, vaccines, or antiviral medication for MERS, Osterhaus says. But the application is still pending, and it may take months before patent authorities rule on it and the patent becomes public. Erasmus MC has not yet gauged commercial interest, Osterhaus says -- let alone given companies control over who can get their hands on the virus, as Saudi Arabia's Memish claimed.
At issue now is the MTA, a document that most biomedical laboratories routinely use when they exchange cells, samples, or pathogens. It governs, among other things, what the receiving labs can do with the virus. The MTA for the MERS virus, which was obtained by ScienceInsider, stipulates that the virus material still belongs to the original provider (in this case Erasmus MC) and that the recipient cannot give it to other labs. It also asks for written consent from Erasmus for using the virus for commercial purposes.
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Matthew Frieman, a coronavirus researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, says that he ordered the virus as soon as he heard about it. It took a couple of weeks to get the paperwork done, he says, "but there was nothing unique about that process." Drosten, who has developed a diagnostic test using the virus from Erasmus MC, says that "anyone can use [the virus] for free." "What really shocks me is that the WHO seems to be buying into" the complaints, he says.
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Even if the MTA does not impede sharing of the virus, questions about intellectual property rights may well surface in the future. Memish says that his main gripe is with the fact that Zaki sent a virus sample taken from a patient in Saudi Arabia to Rotterdam in the first place and that Erasmus MC has been able to file for patents as a result. "Samples … were shipped outside of the country without the knowledge or permission of the Ministry of Health and I cannot believe that any country on this planet would allow this to happen," Memish says.
) "maybe, it is because they now do all this spraying against mosquitoes. Today, when I was driving, I went through the whole cloud of it."
