UMKC grad who said professor stole his invention will share millions from settlement
Imagine inventing a key element of a hot new drug and then getting nothing for it, not even your name on the patent, let alone the millions of dollars that would have been spilling into your bank account had you gotten credit.
Such was Kishore Cholkar’s hard luck. But now a decade after his breakthrough research done while he was working toward a doctorate at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Cholkar will get at least $1.4 million for the drug delivery system he developed, according to a settlement agreement The Star obtained through an open records request.
Over time, his share will likely amount to much more, as the drug is one of the leading treatments for dry eye, a growing market segment that garnered $5 billion in sales in 2019 alone.
The university also will share in some of the profits.
Before the legal settlement was approved, Cholkar stood to collect nothing from his invention of an improved method to deliver medication via drops to the back of the eye. His former professor, Ashim Mitra, sold the technology to a drug development company without the knowledge of Cholkar or UMKC, which also had an ownership interest.
The university, too, was cut out of the deal.
The University of Missouri System sued. The settlement ended the litigation.
Now, both Cholkar and the university will receive upfront seven-figure cash payments as well as potentially millions more in royalties from sales of Cequa.
That drug and others like it treat the growing number of people who experience discomfort and trouble seeing due to age and, for young and old, the “growing use of screens, improper diet, growing use of contact lenses and rise in the number of LASIK surgeries,” according to Fortune Business Insights.
Cequa went on sale in the United States a year ago.
Cholkar’s $1.4 million will come out of the $6.45 million that the university is set to get in upfront payments over the next five years, after which each will share in future revenues.
The UM System did not disclose terms of the settlement in the terse press release it issued on Dec. 28. Its three paragraphs only announced the conclusion of the nearly two-year court battle the university waged against Mitra; the drug development company, Auven Therapeutics Management; and the manufacturer that brought Cequa to market, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries.
Those details are becoming public because The Star obtained a lightly redacted copy of the documents after filing a request under the state Sunshine Law.
The settlement allows Mitra to share in future profits from the sale of the drug he secretly helped bring to market, but the percentages were redacted from the documents. The lawsuit said he had been paid $1.5 million for his work as of the time it was filed in February 2019 and had the potential of earning $10 million more.
He must pay some portion of his royalties to the UM System, but those numbers, too, were blacked out. His attorney declined comment on his behalf.
As part of the settlement, the university withdrew its ownership claims to the patented technology. UM also declined comment.
An attorney for Cholkar did not respond to a request for comment.
While earning his doctorate at UMKC in the early 2010s, Cholkar developed a better way to deliver drugs to hard-to-reach parts of the eye using nanotechnology. More than some others, his method gets higher concentrations of medicine to inflammation causing the dry eye condition so that tears flow again, the company that makes the drug says.
Mitra was his professor and encouraged the research. Mitra also worked on the project, then later sought to commercialize the innovations without notifying the university.
UM claimed in its lawsuit that Mitra stole Cholkar’s work and put his own name on the patent application.
The university claimed that it was the rightful owner, as the technology was developed with university resources while Mitra was a UMKC employee and Cholkar a graduate research assistant. To encourage innovation, it was the university’s policy to share one third of profits and royalties with the professors or students whose research was commercialized, UMKC said at the time of the lawsuit.
The university conducted an internal investigation in 2018 and early 2019, which determined that Mitra had received $1.5 million even before the product went on the market. When confronted about the sale of the technology, he lied about it, the lawsuit said.
His forced resignation was announced January 2019, effective March 31 that year.
Cholkar was among Mitra’s former students The Kansas City Star interviewed for an article published in November 2018, two months before his resignation. It centered on allegations that Mitra exploited foreign graduate students during his quarter century as head of the pharmaceutical sciences division at UMKC’s pharmacy school.
The students, all from India, said they worried that Mitra might strip them of their visas if they did not agree to perform menial tasks at his home and serve guests at social gatherings. Mitra denied that he had misused his students.
Cholkar did not do the chores other students did for his professor, but said he felt abused by Mitra, having worked for several years on the nanotechnology project but getting no credit when the project headed toward market.
“That was my product, I worked day and night and yet my name was not included,” Cholkar told The Star in 2018. “I was the only student who worked on that product. I put all my efforts into that product. I was cheated.”
Mitra resigned without acknowledging wrongdoing and issued a statement after the lawsuit was filed in his defense.
“I can unequivocally prove that this invention was conceptualized and produced by myself and the rightful co-creators,” he said.
“Dr. Kishore Cholkar is an accomplished student of mine who wrote a paper on other aspects of the Cyclosporine formulation after the patent had already been submitted to the FDA for approval. It is clear to see that both him and UMKC are now trying to reap the benefits of the tireless work myself and others have put in to make this a success.“
Now all will share in it.
This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
