Dana-Far­ber’s 4-year le­gal bat­tle shines a light on the ori­gins of PD-1 re­search — forc­ing a reck­on­ing on who pi­o­neered the land­mark can­cer break­through

Every block­buster drug has roots ex­tend­ing back years, of­ten decades, in­to labs around the world. And on rare oc­ca­sions sci­en­tists’ suc­cess with mice in­spires a re­play of events in a court­room dra­ma that can change the ac­knowl­edged au­thor­ship of the work, and who gets to share in the spoils of their ex­plo­rations.

Dana-Far­ber just proved that again late last week, as chief US dis­trict judge Pat­ti Saris ruled in its fa­vor af­ter a 4-year le­gal bat­tle, con­clud­ing that two not­ed sci­en­tists — the in­sti­tute’s Gor­don Free­man and Clive Wood, for­mer­ly with Wyeth and the Ge­net­ics In­sti­tute and now head of dis­cov­ery at Boehringer In­gel­heim — played key roles in pi­o­neer­ing what’s be­come a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar im­muno-on­col­o­gy busi­ness.

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