Cancer Center, in Suit, Claims Ex-Official Took Research
Cancer Center, in Suit, Claims Ex-Official Took Research
The president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York is in a billion-dollar dispute with his former workplace, a cancer institute at the University of Pennsylvania, over accusations that he walked away with groundbreaking research and used it to help start a valuable biotechnology company.
In a lawsuit, the Leonard and Madlyn Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute at Penn described its former scientific director, Dr. Craig B. Thompson, as “an unscrupulous doctor” who “chose to abscond with the fruits of the Abramson largess.”
The dispute reflects the importance that academic research centers now place on turning discoveries made on their campuses into sources of revenue. Some have engaged in protracted legal battles to ensure compensation for their intellectual property. Yale, for example, won more than $ 1 million in compensation and legal fees in 2005 from a Nobel laureate it had accused of taking its technology.
But the lawsuit against Dr. Thompson has particularly high stakes, potentially affecting the reputations and finances of two of the country’s most prestigious cancer centers.
In a statement, Dr. Thompson denied the accusations made by the Penn institute. “It is unfortunate that the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute has chosen to go down this path,” he said.
And Dr. Thompson’s lawyer said that he would ask the court to dismiss the case, which also names as defendants the company that Dr. Thompson started, Agios Pharmaceuticals, and Celgene, a drug company that invested in Agios.
“There’s no real specific allegation here as to what research it is that he either failed to disclose to Penn or that Agios is actually using,” the lawyer, Allan J. Arffa, said in an interview.
Sloan-Kettering declined to comment, saying it was not a party to the lawsuit, which was filed in the United States District Court in Manhattan in December.
In the suit, the Abramson cancer institute, which has received more than $ 100 million from the philanthropist Leonard Abramson and his family, says that Dr. Thompson concealed his role in starting Agios, which has attracted investors with a potentially new way to treat cancer. The institute says Dr. Thompson’s actions deprived it of proceeds that could support future research, causing it damages that could exceed $ 1 billion.
Three people with knowledge of Dr. Thompson’s version of events, two of whom would speak only on condition of anonymity because of the litigation, said that the University of Pennsylvania knew about Dr. Thompson’s involvement with Agios and even discussed licensing patents to the company, though no agreement was reached.
“When you start a company like this, you want to try to dominate the field,” said Lewis C. Cantley, another founder of Agios and the director of the cancer center at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “The goal was to get as many patents as possible, and it was frustrating that we weren’t able to get any from Penn.”
Michael J. Cleare, executive director of Penn’s Center for Technology Transfer, declined to discuss whether negotiations had been held but said, “Yes, Penn knew about Agios.”
Susan E. Phillips, senior vice president for Penn Medicine, said that the suit had been filed not by the university but by the research institute, a separate entity. She said the university was investigating the accusations.
Penn is in a delicate position because Mr. Abramson is one of the university’s biggest donors, for whom its cancer center is named. He founded U.S. Healthcare, a managed care company that was sold to Aetna for nearly $ 9 billion in 1996.
The Abramson family declined to comment.
Dr. Thompson was hired in 1999 as scientific director of the research institute and in 2006 became director of the entire Abramson Cancer Center. He was named president of Sloan-Kettering in 2010.
Under its agreement with Penn, the Abramson cancer institute has certain rights to intellectual property arising from research it finances. But Mr. Arffa, the lawyer for Dr. Thompson, said he would argue in his motion that the research institute had no standing to sue since Dr. Thompson actually worked for the university.
Academic research institutes have gone to court before to contend that employees commercialized technology without giving them their share.
In 2005, for instance, a court ordered John B. Fenn, a former Yale professor, to pay the university $ 545,000 plus legal fees of about $ 500,000. The court said Dr. Fenn had licensed a molecular analysis technique, which won him a Nobel Prize, to a company he co-founded, without involving Yale.
Cancer Center, in Suit, Claims Ex-Official Took Research
