Science Concentrates Hydrogel restores bad cartilage A collaborative chemistry and orthopedics team has developed a technique that, if verified in animal and human tests, might one day be a therapy for osteoarthritis. In osteoarthritis, joint cartilage loses some of its glycosaminoglycans, highly charged polysaccharides that enable the tissue to retain water, giving it load-bearing capacity and an ability to resist compression and wear. The result is joint pain, for which no direct treatment is currently available. Now, chemist and biomedical engineer Mark W. Grinstaff and coworkers at Boston University, in collaboration with orthopedists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, have devised a method for polymerizing a restorative charged hydrogel network inside damaged cartilage (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2016, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201511767). Researchers have used hydrogels and polymers to strengthen tissues before, but only at surfaces, not throughout tissues, as in this study. Grinstaff and coworkers soaked cow cartilage with a mixture of 2-methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine, which absorbs water and resists compression; ethylene glycol dimethacrylate, a cross-linking agent; and photoinitiating reagents. They then used an optical fiber to irradiate the tissue with green laser light. The light triggered the photoinitiating reagent to jump-start a cross-linking polymerization reaction throughout the tissue. The resulting double network of synthetic and natural components attracts water and improves compressive strength and wear resistance to levels similar to those of healthy cartilage, the team found. Andrew P. Dove of the University of Warwick, a specialist in degradable biomaterials and sustainable polymers, comments that the use of a biological matrix in a double network is “an exciting new approach that has huge potential.” Initiation by green light, which doesn’t penetrate tissue well, might not be ideal for real-world use, he says, but the team should be able to modify its system to work with other types of light or other types of initiators.—STU BORMAN
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | MARCH 14, 2016
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Royalties suit against Harvard moves ahead Judge okays portions of lawsuit filed by former grad student to go to trial A judge decided last month that key piecin the next phases of litigation.” es of a lawsuit filed by a former Harvard Charest, now a health care investor University grad student against the presat Boston-based Tekla Capital Managetigious school over patent royalty distriment, worked in Myers’s lab until 2004. butions will proceed to trial. The tetracycline synthesis The $10 million suit was he helped develop was patfiled in 2013 by Mark G. ented in 2005, and Charest Charest, who had previously was lead author on the resultworked as a grad student in ing Science paper (2005, DOI: the lab of Harvard chemistry 10.1126/science.1109755). professor Andrew G. Myers Harvard licensed the patent and who had helped develop to the company Tetraphase a new synthetic route to tetPharmaceuticals, which Myracycline antibiotics. Charest ers founded in 2006. alleges that he was coerced The university ordered and threatened into acceptCharest the distribution of 50% of ing low royalty payments for royalties to Myers and the his work on the antibiotics and that, after rest divided among the other group he protested his poor treatment, he was members, with 18.75% eventually allotdenied a fair appeals process. ted to Charest. On Feb. 16, Judge Douglas P. WoodIn 2010, this patent was combined lock of the U.S. District Court in Massawith a second patent on a different projchusetts issued an opinion addressing ect not involving Charest, diminishing Harvard’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Charest’s royalties further. Charest Woodlock dismissed a numagain protested and alber of items, including leges that the university R3 R2 H R1 H N(CH3)2 Charest’s claims responded by lowering R4 OH about the initial his royalty share and NH royalty distributions withholding royalty 5 2 R being too low. Myers payments. 6 O O HO O R was also dismissed as Intellectual propR = various groups OH a defendant. erty experts, citing the Still to be adThe synthesis of tetracycline power imbalance bedressed, says Woodantibiotics is at the heart of tween students and their lock’s strongly wordCharest’s lawsuit. professors and institued opinion, are allegations, tell C&EN that it’s tions against Harvard that claim Harvard rare for a student to take on a behemoth failed to offer Charest a proper appeals university especially when millions of process and withheld royalty payments dollars are at stake. after Charest’s appeal. “The situation at Harvard is not unBrian D. O’Reilly, a partner at Epstein, usual, but the lawsuit is,” says Thomas Drangel LLP who is representing ChaG. Wiseman, an intellectual property rest, says he and his client plan to take attorney with a chemistry background the case to trial in the next year. at Smith, Gambrell & Russell. “We are pleased that five of seven “We are hopeful this case will wake claims have been dismissed at this university administrators up to potential early stage of the case,” says Harvard misalignment between their mission spokesman David Cameron. “We and values and the culture and practices look forward to presenting evidence within their technology transfer offices,” to defeat the two remaining claims Charest says.—ELIZABETH WILSON
COURTESY OF MARK CHAREST
TISSUE ENGINEERING
