Pfizer is suing a former employee who allegedly stole drug company secrets related to a controversial cervical cancer vaccine, in the latest twist to a case that has been widely hailed as a public-health success story.
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Pfizer is suing a former employee who allegedly stole drug company secrets related to a controversial cervical cancer vaccine, in the latest twist to a case that has been widely hailed as a public-health success story.
Jeffry Ferrin, a former business development director for the GlaxoSmithKline subsidiary VaxGen, was accused of leaking a host of VaxGen business secrets and trade secrets while he was working for Pfizer, a Pfizer spokesperson confirmed. The allegations against Ferrin include breaching his fiduciary and confidentiality duties, and violation of drug company policies on security, trade secrets and the protection of trade secrets, Pfizer said.
A spokesperson for VaxGen could not be reached. Ferrin’s attorney, John Morken, said that he had not seen the lawsuit but confirmed his involvement in the case. Ferrin intends to prove his innocence in the “reasonable expectation that [Pfizer’s] allegations are baseless,” Morken said.
Pfizer won a $490 million civil penalty and $200 million settlement with VaxGen earlier this year, following accusations that the British vaccine manufacturer had kept generic versions of its Cervarix vaccine, which was approved in 2008, off the U.S. market for 10 years. A law firm representing VaxGen sued Pfizer on behalf of the company’s Cervarix users in 2015, claiming that Pfizer knew its vaccine was safe and yet tried to keep it off the market because of concerns that it was ineffective.
Pfizer has been accused of trying to mislead the public about the efficacy of the vaccine. Cervarix has been the subject of several lawsuits alleging that thousands of women died because their cancers were not detected until they had been late-stage cervical cancers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been 65 to 70 reported deaths since the vaccine’s approval and marketing. The CDC says there is no firm evidence that the vaccine contributed to the deaths of women who died prior to the vaccine’s approval. Pfizer has said that it tested the vaccine on more than 6 million women and identified 26 reported deaths resulting from cervical cancer.
The ensuing litigation has presented the pharmaceutical industry with an opportunity to address concerns about the safety of its vaccines, as many of them do not include the full array of information that experts say is essential to a good vaccine. Pfizer, for example, did not include the full range of the vaccine’s side effects in its approval documents.
Pfizer’s lawsuit against Ferrin states that the drug company failed to respond to numerous requests from VaxGen to discuss details about the vaccine or disclose any proprietary information it had acquired from VaxGen. In addition, the lawsuit alleges that Pfizer never met with VaxGen representatives to discuss how to best commercialize the vaccine.
Morken declined to comment on specifics related to the case, citing the pending litigation. He said that he would be withholding further comments because of the nature of the case. “We’re defending against Pfizer’s lawsuit, and we will defend it vigorously,” Morken said.
Pfizer filed its lawsuit on 6 August, seeking $3.86 million in compensatory damages and $30.8 million in punitive damages, according to the filing.