Merck, Johns Hopkins dispute Keytruda patents

Merck has sued Johns Hopkins, asserting that the university surreptitiously patented methods of use for Keytruda derived from a research collaboration, licensed the patents to a diagnostic test company in violation of its contract with Merck, and sought “hundreds of millions of dollars” in royalties from the pharma.

The research investigated the use of Keytruda pembrolizumab to treat cancer patients with tumors that exhibit a high microsatellite instability (MSI-high) or a mismatch repair (dMMR) deficiency...