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Comment by Benjamin_Dobell | Hacker News Reader

Awesome research. But...

> The researchers then checked snot from hospitalized patients. Of 187 samples, all but one were colonized by either S. aureus or S. lugdunensis

> S. lugdunensis, was killing S. aureus. Its weapon of choice? A small compound dubbed lugdunin

> The German researchers who performed the study have filed a patent for lugdunin

Are we really allowing people to patent naturally occurring biological compounds these days? Shouldn't the patent be for specific treatments derived from their findings on lugdunin, not the compound itself?

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You have to choose a system. If we don't want naturally-occurring compounds patented, but we want them researched for potential drug use, we need more public funding. Otherwise, we have to offer researchers and drug manufacturers an incentive to take risks with exploring these compounds.

Barring lugdunin from being patented while providing no public funding would incentivise this group to withhold publication until they thought they'd found every commercially-reasonably derivation.

At least if they'd kept their findings secret, researchers could independently be researching the same thing.

Now independent researchers won't want to touch lugdunin because they'll need to license the patent, however they won't know whether licensing the patent is worthwhile until they do their research. This will prevent further research, not encourage it.

Are you sure about that? I would think that the patent wouldn't apply to non-commercial investigations or research. That is you would be free to synthesize or extract this chemical in a laboratory environment. However, if you wished to manufacture the drug for commercial purposes then you would need to license the patent.

Well, potential researchers will also have to weigh the possibility that they spend all of the time and effort to research other possibilities for it only to find out that after all of the licensing fees, etc they won't even be able to break even on the fruits of their research.

It carries too high of a risk for financially-minded people (looking for a return on investment) to throw money at it.

>It carries too high of a risk for financially-minded people (looking for a return on investment) to throw money at it.

As opposed to the risk of searching for some completely new thing that may not exist?

You're right that it won't apply for non-commercial investigations. But how are you funding the investigation? It's typically funded by the proceeds generated from the research. Research is always hit and miss as to profitability, more miss than hit. Factor in potentially unknown licensing arrangements, even if you do have a "hit", and suddenly your research doesn't look like such a good idea.

> It's typically funded by the proceeds generated from the research.

That's only true in the case of commercial R&D. For non-commercial (academic) research, the funding is normally through a grant mechanism (not company supported). Academic research is almost never concerned with the licensing/patent issues aside from "can I run my experiment". It is common for academic labs to use drugs that are still "in the pipeline" for experiments.

" I would think that the patent wouldn't apply to non-commercial investigations or research. "

The exception, at least in US law, is super-super slim

Worse, other commercial researches will be wasting their time with busywork to find a non-patented analog which they can claim for themselves, instead of working on new things.

That's not actually a bad thing. The first signs of resistance occur on average 1~2 years after introduction of a novel abx; the search for variants helps to extend the usable life of a new family of antibiotics.

Why is finding a non-patented analog a bad thing? A lot of our medical discoveries are incremental advancements brought about work on analogs.

Maybe a company will find a new mechanism of action when they look at analogs? Maybe a less toxic version? Maybe the lead compound fails but the backups work?

As someone who used to work in drug development, I disagree.

Patents don't prevent compounds from being explored in research. If this is anything like other discoveries, companies will start looking at lugdunin very closely.

What is it's mechanism of action? Can the structure be optimized? What else could it be used for?

Other antibiotics have been patented and that didn't stop companies from doing the research and tweaking the structure to make it even better.

> What is its mechanism of action?

From this image of the structure (http://cen.acs.org/content/dam/cen/94/31/09431-notw4-Lugduni...) it looks very much like some kind of small pore. That's a total guess, of course, but a cyclic peptide with alternating chirality looks reasonable, although a little small at only 7 residues.

It sounds like drug discovery ought to be taxpayer-funded, then, as a project that is in the public interest but difficult to monetize without jeopardizing the public interest.

I think that even private-sector-developed drugs rely on publicly-funded research.

Worst is when American companies charge U.S. customers higher prices than overseas consumers for drugs that were developed using USA-taxpayer-funded research.

Worse yet, you donate money 'for the cure' it's discovered and sold back to you at 5000% mark up.

It's hard to disentangle things, as publicly-sector-developed drugs also rely on privately-funded research.

For a simple example, an academic or non-profit group might get reduced cost access to research materials and software.

Also, publicly-funded research may have a mix of funding sources, including private philanthropy and for-profit companies.

You really think it's bad to charge a lower price to lower income countries? A drug company should just charge people in Egypt the same as the US?

You have that backward.

They charge everyone as much as they can get away with, its still the same old supply and demand. The issue is that say France/Egypt/India can provide an organize front when dealing with pharmaceutical companies so they get better deals.

Ever seen the video with Ron Paul being asked a question with what should happen to a person who has no insurance but needs immediate medical care and the audience shouted "Let him die!". There's your answer.

Never gets old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PepQF7G-It0

>we need more public funding. Otherwise, we have to offer researchers and drug manufacturers an incentive...

I'll take researchers for $1,000, Alex.

Not a knock to drug manufacturers who are simply acting as they should under the current profit-driven system, but I think we'd be far better off if more of this existential-level stuff (like health) were government functions, or at least government sponsored and not-for-profit.

So, let's support a federation of researchers who have direct incentive for discovery. Then, let's make those discoveries public domain.

If we applied that same logic to space exploration, Space X wouldn't exist.

So, let's instead apply it where I suggested we should.

That's not a valid counter argument. He's using an analogy to produce a practical counter-example where private funded research is producing better / cheaper solutions (presumably, I'm uninformed on the subject). I think a more valid counter-argument would be arguing SpaceX isn't better, or that the domains share no similarities.

>*a more valid counter-argument would be arguing that SpaceX isn't better or that the domains share no similarities

Not quite. Arguing that Space X is no better would be following a red herring and arguing that there are no similarities is too high a standard. A valid counterargument merely needs to show that they are sufficiently different in some important way.

And, my (admittedly pithy) counterargument ran exactly along those lines.

Meanwhile, the main difference between the domains had already been pointed out in my original comment, and I even provided an example of a relevant domain.

So, you've gotten it exactly backwards: the burden is on my respondent to demonstrate why SpaceX is a relevant analogy/counterargument.

>You have to choose a system.

Cool I choose heaps of public funding and patents dead forever!

Me too, makes definitely more sense than the other way 'round.

Indeed. It is all about incentives. And in the end, pharmaceutical companies have the incentive to keep people sick so they can keep selling drugs, while the public has the incentive to keep people healthy. So it is actually a no-brainer.

That explains why Gilead produced a cure for hepatitis C.

These are German researchers at a German university. Aren't they already publicly funded? (honest question, I don't know).

I don't know but it wouldn't make a difference as long as someone else could come along and take out a patent on what they found.

This is the sort of thing that requires and international treaty.

I don't see any reason why the researchers couldn't have placed their discovery in the public domain, just as Tim Berners-Lee did with his ideas.

Unfortunately many universities (and hence researchers) are under pressure to commercialise their IP, based on the assumption that such behaviour is beneficial to the economy.

Well, which is easier?

1. Get a patent, find a commercial partner and investors who will give you a ton of money to develop it in the hopes of getting a return.

2. Make it public domain, remove any financial incentive to develop it, then try and convince whoever to give you hundreds of millions of dollars to develop it without any hope of financial return?

Those are not the only options. Free and open source innovations can create enormous economic opportunities - witness Linux, the Web, etc etc. Even now, unpatented medicines are widely commercially available and making some people a lot of money.

Can you give examples of unpatented medicines making people a lot of money?

The folks I know who work in generics complain about the razor thin margins.

The article states that they are seeking a commercial partner, which suggests the research was indeed publicly funded.

The website[1] of the lead author, Andreas Peschel, lists funding at the bottom. Almost all projects are funded by the DFG. The DFG is an institution that funds research and is itself funded by taxpayer money.

So yes, this research has been paid for by the German public. However, it is common for universities to apply for patents. Revenue from patent licensing is then usually shared between the university and the researchers.

[1]: http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/fakultaeten/mathematisch-naturwi...

The US spends yearly US$26.4 billion of collected taxes on medical research. If as you say, we got to choose a system, patents of naturally-occurring compounds or state funded research, does that mean that the state can by issuing this patent save $26.4 billion and put that money somewhere else?

Its not a "choose a system" kind of deal. It never has been. It always been state funded research + investment supported by patents + university funds + non-profit funds + additional government funded incentives. The question we should ask is if this specific incentive is needed together with all the other incentives in order to create a end user product that will saves lives sometime in the future.

There was a prior HN discussion around who owns what IP when public funding is involved. It was an interesting discussion for those who are interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9268349

Composition of matter patents got a lot harder for naturally isolated compounds circa 2014. We'll see if it gets granted.

Having said that, a patent for general anti-biotic+matter is probably valid and it's unlikely that this compound will be used for much else.

> Shouldn't the patent be for specific treatments derived from their findings on lugdunin, not the compound itself?

I would expect the patent to be on the process for isolating or synthesizing the compound.

You know something is wrong with the IP system when companies start patenting snot.

Most antibiotics are naturally occurring biological compounds (besides things like sulfonamides). Given how little upside there tends to be for developing new antibiotics vs. the public good that new ones can bring for treating resistant bugs, this is one of the very few areas where I'm firmly in favor of allowing patent protection.

Well if it is patented and the terms are very lenient, because it's owned by the government, then that's the best of both worlds since it prevents some other company from patenting it and charging heaps and then it gets put into the public domain in 20 years (or whatever the term is).

Could they be patenting it to prevent others from doing so?

They'll probably make some money out of it, to fund more research, but hopefully any deal with pharmaceutical companies should have some pricing clause to make this widely affordable to public health services.

Under the Supreme Court's decision in Myriad (which held you can't patent naturally-occurring gene sequences by themselves), you probably can't patent a naturally-occurring biological compound.

... in the United States.

They filed for a patent under the European patent regime, right?

I should have RTFA'ed.

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