Dana-Farber says one of its researchers was screwed out of credit for possible anti-cancer therapy, so it sues

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is suing a Japanese researcher it says patented a promising method for battling cancer that is based on work by researchers at Dana-Farber and Genetics Institute in Cambridge. A Japanese drug company and Bristol-Myers Squibb are also named.

At issue are techniques of "cancer immunotherapy," in which researchers hope to get a person's own immune system to hunt and kill cancer cells. In its lawsuit, filed last week in US District Court in Boston, Dana Farber wants the two local researchers' names added to the patents, which would let it license the technique to other drug companies.

In its lawsuit, Dana Farber said one of its researchers, Gordon Freeman, began investigating the idea in the 1990s and discovered a possible way to target cancer cells by blocking a protein on the surface of cancer cells that normally signals immune cells to leave them alone.

The suit continues that Freeman and Genetics Institute scientist Clive Wood agreed to share not just details of their work with Kyoto University researcher Tasuko Honjo but samples of the specific proteins and antibodies they had developed. The three then collaborated on further research into the idea, Dana-Farber says.

But in 2009, 2014 and 2015, Dana-Farber charges, Honjo and three Japanese colleagues won US patents for the technology that do not mention Freeman or Wood. In 2014, Bristol-Myers Squibb won FDA approval to market two antibodies based on the work.

Dana-Farber's suit asks a judge to order Freeman and Wood's names be added to the patents because of what it says was their critical role in developing the ideas in them:

In their meetings and other communications with Honjo, Freeman and Wood did more than merely provide Honjo with well-known principles or explain the state of the art.

As part of their collaborative research with Honjo, Freeman and Wood contributed their ideas to the total inventive concept that is claimed in the Patents.

Freeman and Wood conceived and made significant contributions to important aspects and features of the inventions claimed in the Patents.

Dana-Farber continues:

As part of its mission to disseminate innovative patient therapies and scientific discoveries across the United States and throughout the world, Dana-Farber seeks an order correcting inventorship on the Patents. Its objective in pursuing this action is to confirm its ability to grant non-exclusive licenses to companies interested in developing cancer immunotherapies directed to the [discoveries], in order to ensure broad patient access to the cancer treatments claimed in the Patents.