Alimta patent upheld

Published in the Dec. 8, 2010, Issue

A U.S. District Court judge on Nov. 15 upheld the patent for the cancer drug Alimta. The University holds the patent for Alimta, invented by chemistry professor emeritus Edward C. Taylor. Taylor developed the drug in collaboration with Eli Lilly and Co., which has an exclusive license for the patent, and Princeton receives royalties on sales of the drug.

“Without Alimta, Princeton could not have constructed the splendid new Frick Hall, nor could it have attracted the stellar crop of junior and senior faculty members” who recently joined the chemistry department, said Provost Christopher Eisgruber ’83. He said the court’s ruling “not only recognizes the benefits that Ted Taylor's research has delivered to the world, but also makes it possible for Alimta revenues to underwrite future scientific discoveries at Princeton.”

Three generic drugmakers had challenged the patent, which protects Alimta until July 2016; Princeton and Lilly went to court to defend it. Lilly reported Alimta sales of $1.64 billion for the first nine months of 2010.

2 Responses

David S. Herr ’65

8 Years Ago

I was dismayed to read the article (Campus Notebook, Dec. 8) regarding the University’s legal action, in concert with Eli Lilly and Co., to keep the cancer drug Alimta from being made available as a generic drug for an additional five years. If the University and Eli Lilly are the winners in this case, who are the losers? I would propose that the losers are the lung-cancer patients who are being charged $2,800 per dose (see drugstore.com) for their treatments. Alimta received FDA approval and patent protection in 2004 and — until Princeton received a patent extension — it was due to become available as a generic in 2011, which would lead to a much lower cost to the patient.

Now, it will not be available as a generic until mid-2016, preserving the University’s profits but harming patients in the process. It is likely that the standard seven-year period of patent protection has been enough to cover the development cost of the drug. It certainly provided enough profits to the University to pay for Frick Chemistry Lab. It is disheartening to see the University harming low-income patients and contributing to the high cost of American health care in this way.

Daniel Feigelson ’90

8 Years Ago

I agree with David Herr ’65 (letters, Jan. 19) that seeing someone suffer from a terminal disease solely because she can’t afford an extant treatment is heart-wrenching. But his proposal that innovative drug companies give away their medicines is untenable. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars to bring a new drug to market. For the innovative drug business to be viable, the sales of such a drug must cover the drug’s own development costs and the failures of dozens of drug candidates in clinical trials, and still generate a profit. The sole peer-reviewed study published on the subject (Grabowski, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Vol. 7, pp. 479–488) concluded that a new drug needs 13 to 16 years of market exclusivity to justify its development. Patent protection for Alimta was sought in 1989 and granted in 1994 (with a 2011 expiration), but FDA approval only came in 2004.

Without the possibility of a patent term extension until 2016 to compensate for slow FDA approval, it is doubtful that Alimta would have reached the market; without the profits generated by Alimta over the next five years, other promising new drugs may die in the pipeline. Unquestionably, some of the many students who will be trained in Princeton’s new chemistry building, built with Alimta royalties, will contribute to humanity during their careers by participating in new drug development, or by developing generic versions of older drugs. The latter cause the price of drugs in the United States to plummet precipitously, making those medications affordable for nearly everyone, and giving innovator companies incentive to develop new drugs.

Editor’s note: An expanded version of this letter can be found at PAW Online at paw.princeton.edu.