The President of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City Craig Thompson received a packet unpleasant vacation: A $ 1 billion lawsuit by the cancer center, he used to head. The Leonard and Madlyn Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, part of the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, alleges that Thompson, a prominent researcher who worked at the institute for 12 years, hiding his involvement with a biotech company. The lawsuit claims that when confronted, Thompson led the institute to believe that he has no intellectual property rights on discoveries now in dispute, rights which he says he has. Co-defendants in the trial are a Thompson helped shape society, Agios Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Celgene Corporation of Summit, New Jersey. Celgene has recently strengthened its investment in Agios $ 150 million.
Lawyers for both parties were tight-lipped. Through his lawyer, Thompson declined to comment beyond the release of the following statement: "The allegations in this lawsuit are baseless and without merit It is unfortunate that the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute has chosen to. go this route. "
Clifford David Burger, a lawyer with Robinson Brog Leinwand Greene Genovese and Gluck representing the Abramson institute, said that "I can not develop in a telephone conversation the facts alleged in the complaint." The document, he believes, "the story."
in a complaint filed 13 pages December 13 with the US District Court, Southern District of New York, the Institute describes Thompson as "an unscrupulous doctor "who" chose to abscond with the fruits of the Abramson largess. "the Abramson Cancer Center was renamed in 02 after the Abramson family donated over $ 100 million, adding that the money be used for research and treatment of cancer and that the institute has all or some of the discoveries have been made there. Thompson became the founding scientific Director of the research Institute of the Abramson family cancer in 1999 and in 06 took the head of the Abramson Cancer Center.
The complaint said that Thompson had first come on the possibility that he would form a company based on his work in the metabolism of cancer cells. Among other things, in 07, he said his work suggested that metformin diabetes drug could reduce the risk of cancer. But the complaint continues, it does not alert the institute when he helped start a company in August 07, which was later renamed Agios Pharmaceuticals.
However, the trial did not specify that Agios was deliberately concealed the fact that Thompson was a co-founder. In 09, the complaint notes, the company has publicly stated that Thompson was one of three founders. Seeking press releases Agios also found that the first set by the company in 08 the list Thompson as co-founder.
But the complaint alleges that Abramson did not know it at the time. In October 2011, it was reported publicly as $ Celgene invested $ 20 million in Agios above 130 million invested in April 2010. The April 2010 Agios press release announcing the agreement did not name Thompson as co-founder, the suit said.
"Because of the concealment of Mr. Thompson, the Institute has not learned from Dr. Thompson's participation in Agios until the end of 2011," the complaint bed The university asked Thompson "if its association with Agios was a matter within the jurisdiction of the University Centre for Technology Transfer." Thompson said no, according to the complaint.
The Institute of Cancer Abramson argues that Thompson "knowingly misrepresented in Agios and Celgene it had the property of all the work financed in whole or in part by the Institute related to the platform research on cancer metabolism. "Although the damage is difficult to calculate, the institute said they are" estimated at more than $ 1 billion in the end. "
Thompson took a leave of Abramson there about a year to start his position as President and CEO at Sloan-Kettering and formally Abramson left at the end of October this year. He remains chairman of the scientific advisory board of Agios, according to the company Web site.
Thompson, companies and their lawyers have until early February to file a response with the court.
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