Yamanaka criticizes high patent medical technologies royalties
News On Japan via NHKReloaded -- Oct 08
A Kyoto University professor says companies should not charge high patent royalties for new medical technologies to allow everyone to benefit from them.
Professor Shinya Yamanaka discovered a method to produce iPS cells, or induced pluripotent stem cells, from ordinary cell tissue. He was one of the Kyoto University professorspeakers at an international conference that opened in Kyoto on Sunday.
About 1,000 people from 80 countries and territories are attending the event. They include politicians and Nobel Prize-winning scientists. The participants are discussing issues linked to scientific advancement, including global warming and medical ethics.
Yamanaka said everyone, regardless of his or her religion or financial status, should be able to benefit from discoveries in the medical field.
But he pointed out that companies do not share their patents, and developing countries do not benefit from the new treatments.
Yamanaka said he has worked hard to obtain patents and cut costs to prevent monopolization since his team found a way to develop iPS cells.
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