LONDON (Agence de Presse Medicale for Reuters Health) - Britain’s Oxford Biomedica denied on Tuesday it had stopped a scientist talking about new findings regarding the safety of one of its lentiviral gene therapy vectors.
Mike Themis from the Gene Therapy Group at Imperial College, London, pulled out of a talk he was schedule to give at the Royal Society of Medicine on Monday evening about gene therapy safety and the risk that vectors could cause infection.
He could not be reached for an explanation but other speakers at the meeting said he was involved in a legal dispute with Oxford Biomedica concerning data on the oncogenic potential of some lentiviral vectors.
“The story is that Dr. Themis could not give his talk because of pending publication of his data on the use of lentiviral vectors supplied by Oxford Biomedica for gene therapy in mice,” said Edward Tuddenham, Director of the Medical Research Council’s haemostasis and thrombosis research group at Imperial.
“Solicitors for both parties have been involved in protracted negotiations about the results, " added Professor Tuddenham, who pioneered the cloning of factor Vlll.
Responding to the allegations, company chief executive Alan Kingsman told APM: “There is a minor dispute between Oxford Biomedica and Mike Themis but nothing that would stop him talking.”
Professor Kingsman said solicitors were involved only because Themis’ laboratory was refusing to honour an agreement to let the company see the full data he had generated so that it could assess their significance.
The company has already licensed its LentiVector gene delivery technology to several drugmakers, including Merck and Biogen Idec. This follows a “breakthrough” in 2002 when the company and Imperial said they had achieved “very efficient gene transfer to mouse embryos in utero,” which, if reproducible in man, “creates the potential to cure diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis.”
Last November, the UK Gene Therapy Advisory Committee said reports had been received of the development of liver tumours in a preclinical study using lentiviral vectors. Most of the tumours occurred in mice that had been treated in utero with a vector carrying the factor lX gene.
Oxford Biomedica has itself alerted gene therapy researchers to “potential oncogene activity” of certain hepatitis viruses used as viral vectors in a letter published in the journal Gene Therapy.
MeSH Headings:Behavior and Behavior Mechanisms: Behavioral Sciences: Behavioral Disciplines and Activities: DNA, Recombinant: Ethics: Ethics, Medical: Ethics, Professional: Genetic Vectors: Humanities: Morals: Oncogenic Viruses: Philosophy: Philosophy, Medical: Psychology: Psychology, Social: Vertebrate Viruses: Lentivirus: Health Care Quality, Access, and Evaluation: adverse effects: therapeutic use: Health Care: Humanities: Psychiatry and PsychologyCopyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
