SAN FRANCISCO, November
26, 2013 – Invitae Corporation, a genetic diagnostics company, today
announced that it plans to defend its right to provide naturally occurring
genetic information and services to physicians for their cancer patients
through its genetic testing services.
Invitae has been named a defendant in a lawsuit filed by Myriad
Genetics, Inc. regarding Invitae’s BRCA and MUTYH genetic tests. Invitae disagrees with the allegations of the
lawsuit and plans to vigorously defend itself against the lawsuit, which it
believes has no merit.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that naturally
occurring DNA and the information it encodes cannot be patented (Assn’n for
Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 133 S. Ct. 2107 [2013]) and thus ushered
in a new era of personalized medicine. This
followed on a prior Supreme Court ruling establishing that naturally occurring
biological correlations were not patentable subject matter (Mayo Collaborative
Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 132 S. Ct. 1289 [2011]). The breast cancer community will benefit from
these decisions with the introduction of multiple new diagnostic tests to
analyze BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, increasing the availability and options for
patients and physicians. Invitae and its collaborators recently presented
results at scientific conferences demonstrating the validity of next generation
DNA sequencing technology to accurately identify pathogenic variants in a
variety of cancer genes including BRCA1 and 2.
Invitae’s mission is to reinvent genetic testing by
making it more affordable and accessible than ever before. The company’s
goal is to bring multi-use genetic testing into routine medical practice. Invitae
offers full gene sequencing for both BRCA1 and BRCA2 with deletion and duplication
analysis to physicians with the ability to upgrade to a larger hereditary
cancer syndromes panel of 27 genes – all for just $1,500.
“The issue of DNA
patents goes far beyond BRCA testing,” said Randy Scott, co-founder of Invitae.
“Our company was founded around the core
belief that every individual has the right to self-knowledge (meaning they have
a right to know their own DNA sequence information), and we believe that the
Supreme Court rulings validate our view that no company can claim ownership
over naturally occurring genetic information.”
Dr. Scott continued, “Today, clinically-observed genetic
variants are often held in proprietary databases, restricting their access by
the medical community. By broadening access and sharing genetic
information, we can collectively harness the power of the genome to improve our
understanding of disease and improve healthcare for everyone. Providing broad
access to genetic testing will allow the medical community to collectively
diagnose disease better, faster and cheaper; offer patients more effective healthcare
and reduce costs to the healthcare system.”
Commitment to Sharing
Genetic Information: Invitae Supports the Free the Data! Initiative
The Free
the Data! initiative is a grassroots patient and physician movement to build an
open access database to enable the interpretation and diagnosis of clinical variants,
including BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations. The goal of Free the Data! is to fill the
public information gap caused by the lack of available genetic information for
the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes with plans to expand to provide other types of
genetic information in open, searchable databases, including the National Center
for Biotechnology Information’s database, ClinVar.
Free the
Data! invites individuals to share their genetic variation safely, securely and
with appropriate privacy settings, in a public database. The medical and
scientific community can then access this collective data to accelerate our
understanding of genetic disease, find new therapies and eventually prevent
disease. Please visit www.free-the-data.org or
contact 202.966.5557 x201 for more information about Free the Data!
Invitae is a founding member of the Free The Data! Coalition.
Other coalition members include Genetic Alliance, UCSF, Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered (FORCE), a group of patient advocates,
Partners Healthcare & ICCG,
GeneDX, amongst others.
About Invitae Corporation
Specializing in
genetic diagnostics for hereditary disorders, Invitae’s mission is to make
multi-use genetic testing more accessible and affordable than ever before.
The company is
pursuing a strategy over the next several years to aggregate all the world's
medical genetic tests (>3,000 known Mendelian conditions) into a single
assay at a lower cost than most single gene tests today.
This capability is
increasingly enabled by the rapid advancements in DNA sequencing technology.
Invitae hopes to lead the way from an era of genetic scarcity to genetic
abundance to significantly improve healthcare worldwide.
For further
information, please visit www.invitae.com.
Contact:
Katherine Stueland
pr@invitae.com
206.226.0672
Paul Laland
plaland@brewlife.com
415.946.1071