Australian court upholds breast cancer gene patent

An appeal to stop gene mutations associated with breast cancer being patented has failed.

Image: Annie Cavanagh/Flickr

The Federal Court of Australia in Sydney ruled on 5 September that gene mutations can be patented. 

Myriad Genetics has succeeded in obtaining exclusive rights to sell and detect a number of mutations in the BRCA1 gene, which can determine the risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

The court ruled that a naturally occurring gene could be patented as long as human intervention had created a significant “artificial state of affairs” by isolating the gene from the human body.

The company filed the patent in 1994 but it was contested by patient advocacy group Cancer Voices Australia. 

The case concluded in February 2014 but the appeal process was only completed last week when Justice John Nicholas ruled that, although the mutated gene was exactly the same inside and outside the body, the artificial context gave the company grounds to patent the gene. 

The five judges on the appeal panel disagreed with Justice Nicholas’ reasoning but upheld his judgment, saying, "The chemical and physical makeup of the isolated nucleic acid renders it not only artificial but also different from its natural counterpart."

This judgment goes against a recent US court decision, which stated that naturally occurring genes could not be patented because they were a “product of nature”. 

The appeal was in response to widespread public concern that patenting gene mutations could prevent the development of life-saving diagnostics and cures.  

Magnetic nanocubes can assemble themselves into DNA-like superstructures

Scientists have found out how magnetic nanoparticles self-assemble, a discovery that could help them develop revolutionary new materials.

Researchers have long been excited about turning nanoparticles and their unique properties into materials, which, just to name a few potential applications, could be used to improve solar panels and create better touch screens.

But there’s a problem - nanoparticles are notoriously difficult to organise into useful arrangements.

However, nanoparticles of magnetite (Fe₃O₄), the most abundant magnetic material on Earth, are known to self-assemble into fine compass needles inside animals such as birds to help them navigate. So researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago in the US and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel decided to study how these nanoparticles self-assemble, and what influences their shape.

Their results are published today in Science, and reveal that, in the presence of a magnetic field, magnetic nanoparticles will assemble into helical, DNA-like chains.

Surprisingly, the helices were chiral, which means they’re either left- or right-handed - even though magnetite nanoparticles themselves don’t show any chirality. By modelling the self-assembly process, the researchers discovered that the nanoparticles self-assemble into chiral helices because of a range of competing forces acting on them - ranging from the magnetic force to temperature.

A University of Illinois at Chicago press release explains: 

“In the presence of an external magnetic field, the superparamagnetic nanocubes - which are randomly magnetic and can flip with temperature changes - became tiny magnets with different symmetries of the competing forces acting between them. As a result, when two cubes are face-to-face, they tend to tilt with respect to each other, forming a small angle to the right or left - the seed of a chiral helix, as more nanocubes line up with the first two.”

Knowing the carefully controlled conditions that cause these nanoparticles to self-assemble could greatly help researchers work out how to use them to make functional materials.