Million dollar mice: Li's rodent models have huge potential.

Mice have made Hung Li a celebrity in Taiwan's science community. In January this year, Li's paper detailing his mouse models for a fatal motor neuron disease appeared in Nature Genetics (24, 66–70; 2000). On a small island where scientists have only recently started publishing in major journals, this caused quite a stir.

But drowning out the domestic acclaim has been an inundation of requests from overseas laboratories seeking the licensing rights to Li's mice and his results.

Li's research, carried out at his lab in the Academia Sinica's Institute of Molecular Biology, has specific applications for studying spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Usually appearing in infants, this disease weakens the muscles and often leads to respiratory-related fatality.

Hung Li (second from right) and the team behind the mice.

To tackle the problem, Li generated genetically engineered mice that suffered from a form of human SMA. He then used them to screen drug candidates. Two patents are now in the offing, and biotech companies in the United States and Taiwan are offering around US$1 million for the mice and/or related research results.

But Li would have to share any royalties with his department, the academy and the government. More importantly, any negotiations must be done through the academy, and Li must follow their stipulations concerning publication of his research.

With the patent for the mouse model safely filed, it is now available to drug screeners, and the Academia Sinica has recently signed a contract allowing a Taiwanese biotech start-up to use the mice. But the SMA drug patent is still sitting in a lawyer's office in the United States, waiting to be filed.

Li is learning an unpleasant lesson about the effect of patent red-tape not only on licensing but also on research publication. Because Japan and the European Patent Office do not recognize a patent filed after the research underlying it has been published (unlike the United States, which offers a one-year period to file), Li must wait to publish his drug research data.

Li is not so concerned about the money. But he is somewhat vexed by the delay caused by the patenting process and the subsequent accusations made by biotech companies that he is holding up drug development.