Supreme Court accepts case that could shape field of personalized medicine

Bloomberg: Diagnostic Medical Test Patents Draw High Court Scrutiny
The U.S. Supreme Court, accepting a case that will shape the burgeoning business of personalized medicine, agreed to consider what types of diagnostic medical tests can be patented. The justices agreed today to hear an appeal from the Mayo Clinic, which is challenging a lower court decision backing two patents for determining the dosage of medicines to treat stomach diseases. The ruling cleared the patents' owner, Prometheus Laboratories Inc., to press an infringement suit against two Mayo units. Patent protection is important for companies that are focusing on personalized medicine, including Myriad Genetics Inc. (MYGN) and Novartis AG. (NVS) The field involves determining whether a patient is genetically susceptible to a particular disease or would be especially responsive to certain medicines (Stohr and Decker, 6/20).

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This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.