Posts Tagged: "CDC"

How will our patent system treat this wonderful new discovery? How long will it take before its curative benefits can be deployed ? We can only hope that DC’s meddlers in our innovation ecosystem read the Ms. Sun’s article. Because however fervently the medical and scientific communities respond to this growing superbug crisis, IP’s DC government legal eagles are either unaware or unconcerned. The USPTO is regularly rejecting microbial patent applications in blind servitude to Alice-Mayo’s confusing eligibility formula. We can hope, but cannot be assured, the Federal Circuit will make sense some day of Alice-Mayo’s two-step test. But when? Worse, it appears that SCOTUS is infected by the anti-patent poison infesting our Capitol. How refreshing it would be to have our Congress and the nation’s highest Court be as concerned with superbugs as they seem to be with PR-created patent trolls.

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.

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.