Some strains sold to drug companies

Some of the 200 strains of marine fungi discovered in Thailand but being kept at a British university may have been sold to pharmaceutical companies, said the researcher who is demanding their return.

Nigel Hywel-Jones, head of mycology at the National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (Biotec), said a news article in the UK daily Independent and correspondence between himself and the University of Portsmouth have raised a "strong suspicion" that Portsmouth has sold some strains to the industry.

In one e-mail message to Mr Hywel-Jones, Richard Greenwood, head of Portsmouth's School of Biological Sciences, admitted a number of fungal strains collected by Gareth Jones, Portsmouth's former researcher, had been sold to commercial companies.

More than a dozen e-mail exchanges followed in Biotec's attempt to identify the sold cultures but the university refused to discuss the matter further.

Prof Jones came to Thailand in 1993 and worked in collaboration with other Thai scientists on marine fungi with medical potential with Biotec support before joining the centre officially later.

He shipped the fungi to England because Thailand lacked sophisticated storage facilities. No record of transfer was made, however, because the transaction was based on mutual trust that the specimens would be returned on request.

The Independent also quoted a Portsmouth spokesman as saying the university did not own the cultures and thus could not return them because they could belong to "the company" with which the university had a contract.

This contradicts its earlier claim of sole ownership of the cultures on the grounds that they were collected by university staff.

Mr Hywel-Jones believed the university, which deals with Biotec under University of Portsmouth Enterprise Ltd, had contracts with several drug companies in which it is obliged to send specimens of fungi for medical screening.

Jakkrit Kuanpoth, an intellectual property rights expert at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, accused Portsmouth of biopiracy, saying it violated the Convention of Biological Diversity which the British government has ratified.

Under the convention, a member country must agree not to take, extract or make use of biological resources originating from the owner country without its acknowledgment and sharing benefits with its owner.

"It doesn't matter how the fungi were obtained or whether they were sold. Nor does it matter that Thailand has not ratified the convention. What matters is Portsmouth must adhere to the convention," he said.

Prof Jakkrit has warned that everything in the correspondence between the two parties showed that Portsmouth has violated the convention and would be in trouble if the issue was discussed at the political level.