Court Decides Tissue Samples Belong to University, Not Patients

摘要

A high-stakes battle pitting a top prostate cancer researcher and his patients against a major research university over who owns the patients' tissue samples was decided last week in a Missouri federal court. The ruling gives Washington University (WU) in St. Louis ownership of tissue samples that urologist William Catalona began collecting 2 decades ago when he was a faculty member at WU. Catalona, who is now at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois, had sought to establish unprecedented rights for patients by arguing that those who donated to the collection retained control of their tissues.