BRCA2 gene region made public to scupper patent claims
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
A 900,000 bp DNA sequence thought to contain the breast cancer gene BRCA2 has been published on the Internet in a bid to foil patent applications. Writing in Nature (November 30th) Dr John Sulston, director of the Sanger Centre who together with researchers at Washington University, Missouri, published the sequence, says: "It will not be helpful to medicine if, by the year 2003, control of every single gene is tied up by one company or another for 20 years."