Hong Kong-based Contract Research Organization (CRO) GenScript Biotech Corporation (HKG: 1548) has sued its former executive, Fan Xiaohu. Fan is the co-founder and former Chief Science Officer (CSO) of its subsidiary Legend Biotech Corporation (NASDAQ: LEGN). The lawsuit is for infringement of trade secrets and is being brought at the Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court in Jiangsu province. The court session was opened on August 8 this year and will be held again on August 26.
Company Background
GenScript offers life science services as a CRO, biopharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) for cell therapy, and industrial synthetic biological products (industrial enzymes). Legend, meanwhile, is a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy developer. It recently won its first market approval for Carvykti (ciltacabtagene autoleucel) in the US. Fan left Legend in March this year.
Fan’s Background
In the 1990s, Fan successively obtained doctorate degrees in medicine and applied immunology from Xi’an Jiaotong University in China and Hiroshima University in Japan, respectively. He then completed postdoctoral work at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. Fan joined GenScript in 2014 when the company established Legend to develop CAR-T therapies. He was appointed as its CSO, tasked with R & D work. Previously, Endpoints News awarded him the “Global Top 20 Drug R & D Leaders” award as “the main inventor of China’s first CAR-T therapy to be approved abroad.”
Legal Proceedings
Regarding the case, on August 17, GenScript responded that it would not comment. Fan stated that it was inconvenient to disclose relevant information at present.-Fineline Info & Tech
