Posts Tagged: "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention"

The dangers of killer germs and superbugs are not limited to bird flu in China, Ebola in West Africa, Zika in South America and MERS in the Middle East… If we are to have a fighting chance against superbugs and pandemics, we must invest in innovation and safeguard the property rights that incentivize these discoveries. Short-sighted efforts to enervate existing intellectual property rights laws and policies will not only damage incentives to innovate, they may hand a victory to the superbugs.

Superbugs have powerful friends in high places. SCOTUS’s patent eligibility criteria emanating from Mayo/Alice’s mysterious “laws of nature” and credible reports of unremitting turndowns by USPTO applicants portend hard times commercializing much of this research, which means its development and testing may never make it to licensed distribution. In Congress, deficit scolds roll back much needed NIH funding while solons clamor for more military weapons that have long outlived their usefulness. Even sexy pandemics like Ebola, Pan Asian Flu, and Zika and competing with Biden moonshots and precision medicine initiatives are forced to forage for the fiscal nourishment they need to compete and commercialize their critical research.

Treatments for infectious diseases is one area where Allergan is looking to buoy its fortunes in the coming years. The first quarter of 2016 was a strong one for Allergan, which saw its overall revenues increase by 48 percent when compared to 2015’s first quarter; revenue for Allergan’s branded pharmaceutical divisions grew by 71 percent year-over-year. The company’s infectious disease division was not its most profitable and yet it saw the greatest amount of growth compared to the previous year. Teflaro entered the Allergan portfolio thanks to a series of acquisitions in the biopharma realm over the past few years. The pediatric anti-infective was first developed by Forest Laboratories, formerly of New York City, which was acquired by Actavis in February 2014 for a combination of cash and equity which reached a reported $25 billion.

The FDA has been pretty active this year in approving new tests and treatments designed to help identify and eliminate the hepatitis C virus in patients. Swiss healthcare developer Roche (VTX:ROG) received FDA approval this March for a new quantitative RNA test which can help physicians see exactly what level of HCV exists in a patient’s blood instead of simply confirming an active infection. Earlier this year, in late January, the FDA granted approval to Merck & Co. (NYSE:MRK) for a once-daily single tablet treatment branded as Zepatier. Zepatier is another combination drug therapy which incorporates elbasvir and grazoprevir, both HCV RNA inhibitors, and is designed to treat patients having one of two strains of HCV, including the most common strain. A 12-week regimen of the treatment costs $54,600.

Health and government officials around the world are scrambling to find a way to prevent or cure the growing spread of the Zika virus. Could the introduction of genetically modified mosquitos help to reduce the spread of the virus, or does it sound like this will just cause more problems than it solves? What could possibly go wrong with the introduction of genetically modified mosquitoes into the environment?

The 2016 inductee class for the National Inventors Hall of Fame includes two microbiologists whose contributions to the field of food safety have helped to keep many foodborne pathogens, especially Salmonella, in check: John H. Silliker and Welton I. Taylor. These two scientists worked together to develop more effective monitoring techniques for food products in response to the growing concerns in the mid-20th century regarding Salmonella outbreaks, especially those which hit children the hardest. With the anniversaries for important patents issued to both of these food safety engineers having passed in early March, we thought we’d visit their scientific contributions from in our Evolution of Technology series here on IPWatchdog.

Although the American psyche may not always be interested in accomplishing the proper amount of exercise but it still craves the idea of being physically fit. And, as with most things, if there’s a quick shortcut to getting where we want to be, we’re going to try and take it. While some scoff at the idea of an exercise pill, but such an exercise pill could be useful for patients suffering from cardiovascular disease or diabetes for whom exercise is very beneficial but impossible to accomplish. And now the scientific world may be close to discovering chemical compounds useful for mimicking the biological processes stimulated by exercise, much to the delight of couch potatoes everywhere.