NIH asked to march in on Xtandi's price

Although NIH has explicitly stated that price is not a valid justification for it to use march-in rights for patents, two advocacy groups have requested that U.S. government agencies exercise march-in rights for prostate cancer drug Xtandi enzalutamide from Astellas Pharma Inc. (Tokyo:4503).

The Union for Affordable Cancer Treatment (UACT) and Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) sent a University of California that protect inventions derived from research funded by NIH and DoD grants. Under Bayh-Dole, federal agencies may require the holder of a patent developed using federally funded research to license the patent to other parties to "promote the utilization of inventions arising from federally supported research or development." ...