Burroughs Wellcome's AZT patent questioned by federal government. (zidovudine) (National Cancer Institute)

U.S. NCI

Dr. Bernadine Healy, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) said that the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) should be named co-inventor of the anti-AIDS drug AZT (zidovudine).

"NIH believes that investigators at the NCI should have been named as co-inventors on the AZT-related patents issued to Burroughs Wellcome," she said in a statement outlining NIH's claim to AZT.

Burroughs Wellcome maintains that its scientists were the first to conceive of the use of AZT for the treatment of HIV infection "and this creative insight is the basis for the use patent granted in 1988," said Kathy Bartlett, a company spokeswoman. …