Seagen targets Daiichi in cancer drug suit
US biotechnology company Seagen has accused Japanese pharmaceutical company Daiichi Sankyo of infringing patents with a recently-approved breast cancer drug.
Seagen filed the claims at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Monday, October 19.
In the suit, Seagen claims that Daiichi’s Enhertu infringes a patent covering the US company’s proprietary technology enabling the delivery of chemotherapeutic drugs directly to tumour cells.
Seagen’s patent (US number 10,808,039) covers what the company calls its “pioneering innovations” in the field of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs).
ADCs directly target cancer cells with chemotherapeutics, aiming to avoid unnecessary damage to healthy cells.
Calling Daiichi a “new entrant in the ADC field”, Seagen claims the Japanese company’s Enhertu uses Seagen’s so-called “linker” technology, which attaches drugs to an antibody.
The dispute stems back more than a year, with Seagen previously having applied for resolution at the American Arbitration Association.
Daiichi, meanwhile, has publicly rejected Seagen’s claims, stating that the US company’s ownership claims over the technology were “without merit”.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Enhertu last December, while Seagen claims Daiichi may seek FDA approval for other infringing ADCs it has in the pipeline.
Just last month, the drug also received formal approval in Japan for the treatment of patients with HER2 positive metastatic gastric cancer.
Seagen is seeking a court order awarding damages for what it calls Daiichi’s “willful infringement”, and a running royalty on sales of Enhertu in the US.
Earlier this year, Daiichi itself accused US iron therapy specialist Pharmacosmos of infringing its patents for an injectable anaemia treatment.
Daiichi has also recently partnered with UK-based AstraZeneca to jointly develop a new cancer medicine.
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