City Of Hope, Genentech Go To Court Over Royalties.(for human insulin synthesis techniques)

2001 SEP 19 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

The nonprofit City of Hope cancer center is suing biotechnology giant Genentech, Inc., over which entity has the rights to the discoveries that have become the building blocks of the biotech revolution.

Jury selection has begun in Superior Court in what is expected to be a three-month trial. The City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California, is suing biotech giant Genentech of South San Francisco for what attorneys say could amount to $500 million in unpaid royalties.

The suit involves Genentech's 1978 funding of two City of Hope researchers, Arthur Riggs and Keiichi Itakura. Many credit them as the first to synthesize human insulin through techniques that since have been used to create some of the building blocks of biotech, including human growth hormone and a hepatitis B vaccine.

For nearly two decades, Genentech and City of Hope have had a revenue-sharing contract that granted Genentech the patents on the human insulin development technique. City of Hope gets a 2% royalty on sales of certain products stemming from those patents. But in its suit, City of Hope says Genentech has been bilking the charity out of millions of dollars.

Genentech withheld information about lucrative deals that were only revealed through the lawsuit, Glenn Krinsky, City of Hope's general counsel, said. "We do believe we have been cheated,'' Krinsky said.

Because the money was never paid, City of ...