Research Takes On Commerce

Ten years ago, when the link between cancer and genetics was still hazy, the Curie Institute, France’s leading cancer research center, hired Dominique Stoppa-Lyonnet to head its new oncological genetics department. Under her leadership, the Curie Institute became part of an international effort that identified and sequenced the brca1 gene, which indicates a high risk of breast cancer.

By 1995, Stoppa-Lyonnet could offer her patients a test that identifies brca1 mutations and calculates a woman’s predisposition to the disease. Enter the European Patent Office, which in January 2001 granted the American biotechnology company Myriad Genetics a Europe-wide patent over any form of the brca1 test. Stoppa-Lyonnet balked at what she calls “the steamroller commercial interests of a private firm” being accorded “a scandalous, totally intolerable” monopoly that she says limits the access of women across Europe to a test that can save their lives. She filed a brief opposing the patent in October 2001, but a ruling isn’t expected until 2004 at latest.

Meanwhile Stoppa-Lyonnet still tests patients who come to her Left Bank office. “We could be accused of counterfeiting Myriad,” she says. That’s a risk she’s willing to take for her patients — and for France’s principle of universal access to health care.