Suit Over a Marker

A biotech company is suing a prostate cancer researcher for making false claims concerning a disease biomarker, reports Science Insider. According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Robert Getzenberg, then at University of Pittsburgh and now at Johns Hopkins University, he found a biomarker, EPCA-2, for human prostate cancer that he and the University of Pittsburgh patented it. The biotech company Onconome then spent millions of dollars to research, produce, and market a test based on that patent before discovering that the protein was only mapped in rats, not humans. "Notwithstanding the spectacular (and false) results proclaimed by defendants, the Getzenberg assay was no more accurate in distinguishing cancerous tissue from normal tissue than flipping a coin," the lawsuit says.