Word: cellpro
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Your article on the biotech company CellPro and the development of a new treatment for cancer [MEDICINE, May 19] left out some vital facts. The stem-cell technology used in CellPro's product to help treat its ceo, Rick Murdock, was developed not by CellPro but by the researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. To date, CellPro has paid Johns Hopkins nothing for its use of our stem-cell technology, thus depriving us of resources that could be applied to further cancer research. In March a federal jury found that CellPro willfully infringed Johns Hopkins' patents...
Others agree. Dr. Kent Holland, director of the Hemapheresis Center of the bone-marrow-transplant program at Emory University School of Medicine, is already using the CellPro procedure on young leukemia patients. "I don't have any other device that works as well to offer these people," he says. Another supporter is former Senator Birch Baye, who co-authored the 1980 Baye-Dole Act, which gives the government the power to seize a patent in the name of public health or safety and issue a license. Baye says the CellPro case perfectly illustrates the law's intent...
Invariably, however, some cancer cells slip in with the stem cells. CellPro was working on a procedure that would reliably separate cancer cells from stem cells. If those cancer cells could be completely purged from the blood, the cancer might not recur. The problem was that CellPro's experiments were still in their infancy. Said Nicole Provost, leader of the purging team: "I told them we needed about nine months. They told me we had eight weeks. Our first reaction was, 'Oh, man.' I mean, this was Rick's life...
...worked," said Joe Tarnowski, CellPro senior V.P. "Doing the separations later gave us a second level of purging." With a "compassionate use" waiver from the FDA, the procedure was ready for testing. "Rick was the guinea pig," says Tarnowski...
...sons and watching the salmon swim in a creek a mile from his house. He is too savvy to declare himself cured--that determination could take three years--but he is ready for battle, both to save his company and to get the new device into doctors' hands. CellPro lost the latest round in its patent fight with competitors in federal court in April, and in a month a judge could issue a ruling preventing CellPro from selling its product to new customers. "This is personal now," said Murdock. "I'm not just a CEO. I'm a patient...