The University of Missouri sued a former pharmacy professor this week, accusing him of stealing a graduate student’s research and secretly using it to sell a new drug that it said could make him millions.

In the lawsuit against the former professor, Ashim Mitra, the university’s Kansas City campus claimed ownership over the invention of a new treatment for dry eye that Dr. Mitra sold to a drug company. The university said a Ph.D. student under Dr. Mitra’s advisement performed the research that was central to the discovery but was not credited in the patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The lawsuit said Dr. Mitra had already made about $1.5 million from the inventions.

“The university seeks to restore its rightful ownership interest in and its resulting right to a fair share of the proceeds to be generated from the groundbreaking, patented inventions that led to this new F.D.A.-approved drug formulation,” the lawsuit said.

The university said in a statement that Dr. Mitra assisted drug companies in patenting and commercializing these inventions, all the while concealing his efforts and denying his involvement to university officials. The drug at the center of the dispute, Cequa, uses nanotechnology to make it a more effective treatment than traditional eyedrops. It received approval from the Food and Drug Administration in August, and its website advertised it as “coming soon.”