The Changing Legal Landscape for Microbiome Research

John M. Conley presented at Discovery on Target's Targeting the Microbiome conference. His session, "The Changing Legal Landscape for Microbiome Research," reviewed three sets of legal changes that will have a major impact on microbiome research in the next several years. These changes are occurring in patent law, making it much harder to get and enforce patents on both biological substances and analytic methods; in the Common Rule for protecting human research subjects; and in the U.S. and international law of privacy.