Patent bid sparks fear of price hike for cancer test

[Metropolitanjury]

The tests, which detect mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, are performed in eight laboratories nationwide and cost up to $2500, a charge covered by state government-run clinics.

Hundreds of such tests are done in Australia every year, often for close female relatives of women with certain types of breast cancer. A woman with a particular BRCA mutation faces up to an 85 per cent chance she will get breast cancer, compared with a 9 per cent risk for other women.

Last week, Melbourne-based company Genetic Technologies wrote to the laboratories saying it would seek to use its patent rights to conduct all future BRCA testing itself, preventing other labs from competing.

Genetic Technologies, which holds the patent licence for Australia and New Zealand, told The Australian yesterday themove would not increase costs or reduce access for patients.

Cancer Council Australia CEO Ian Olver said experience in Canada, where a licence-holder took similar steps, suggested the opposite.

"There are concerns about costs, and that it could stifle research by leading to a loss of expertise in public laboratories," he said. "There are also implications for the law: if a gene can be patented, where will that lead us?

The (information from the) Human Genome Project was supposed to be common knowledge. You start down a slippery slope (by allowing this)."
Professor Olver said the company that owned the Canadian patent licence increased test prices two- or three-fold when it imposed a monopoly.
Genetic Technologies' business development manager for medical diagnostics, Jonathan Whitty, said patients would access the test in the same way and costs would not rise.

"In terms of pricing, in the last five years we have been providing (BRCA testing) services in competition with the other labs out there," Mr Whitty said. "We know our service and our price is highly competitive. For the patient, it makes no difference."

By Ms.Bobby Aanand, Metropolitan Jury.