Juno, Novartis Settle CAR Patent Lawsuit

Novartis and Juno Therapeutics have agreed to settle patent litigation around chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) technology. Novartis will pay $12.3 million up front and a portion of any future royalties to the Seattle-based start-up. In 2013, Juno licensed CAR technology from, and will now share payments with, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The litigation began in 2012 as a dispute between St. Jude and the University of Pennsylvania, which has licensed technology to Novartis. The settlement will allow each party to advance its own cancer immunotherapies and “rewards the investigators on whose insights those developments are based,” according to Juno CEO Hans Bishop.