Patently natural

21 October 2004 By Robert Cyran Follow @rob_cyran

With nearly all the big drugs companies reporting on the same day, investors may have missed the most important story. One of the last areas impervious to cheap generic drugs may have fallen man made proteins.

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Britain's House of Lords has overturned Amgen's patent on Epogen. The drug, a geneticallymodified version of the human protein erythropoietin is used to combat anemia. Worldwide sales of the drug were $2.4bn last year.

The US biotech giant sought to bar the production and sale of a competing version of the protein produced by Transkaryotic Therapies and SanofiAventis. The court ruled that Amgen's patent was too broad and therefore was invalid. The court stated that patenting a method of producing the protein is acceptable, but patenting an existing protein itself was not.

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