Dan asked me a ways back about who held the most patents on new drugs: here is why I do not believe that drug companies are the primary source of innovation.
There is an article in the WSJ today about a lawsuit between Eli Lilly vs 2 former NIH researchers; I do not have it on-line, and the site below has to do with an earlier lawsuit involving the same drug. http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/federal/judicial/fed/opinions/02opinions/02-1610.html The NIHers, who work(ed) with gene sequencing and in this case the one for human Protein C, were asked by Lilly for help back in the early 80's; they didn't sign a contract, as at the time the biotech revolution had yet to get really rolling, and scientists back then were more excited about the knowledge than knowledgable about the big bucks. Short version: Lilly asked one of the two (Crabtree, IIRC) to testify against UW about their researchers' role in developing the drug Xigris, and he realized that *he* had worked on what led to it back in the '80's. A Lilly-affiliated scientist had since gotten some award for the gene sequencing, without mentioning the work of the 2 former NIHers...which rather po'd Crabtree. He's now suing Lilly. Innovation is a collaboration of many, but I'd guess that this refrain "it's ours alone" is significantly overused by the big pharmas. This site has a couple more articles on patent fights involving Lilly: http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/sigdev.asp?Symbol=LLY This 2005 article mentions that a drug in question was originally discovered by the Burnham Institute, and later aquired by Integra LifeSciences: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20050420-1545-cnspatent.html "...The peptides' role had been discovered earlier by researchers at the Burnham Institute, which patented the peptide sequence and ways to use it. Those patents were subsequently acquired by Integra LifeSciences, a New Jersey company. After learning of the research at Scripps, Integra asked Merck which is unrelated to the U.S. drug maker of the same name to pay for a license for the patents. When the two companies couldn't reach an agreement, Integra sued for patent infringement..." Research done at...as leading into potential drug discovery: http://www.drugresearcher.com/news/ng.asp?id=67074-poxvirus-vaccina-antivirals "...Research done by an Imperial College London team discovered the mechanism allowing Vaccinia virus to shed its outer lipid membrane and enter cells. Viruses, such as influenza, are surrounded by a single lipid membrane, or envelope, and to enter cells this membrane must be removed. Previously, all enveloped viruses were thought to shed their lipid membrane by fusion with a cell membrane, which allows the virus core to be released into the cell. "This work has uncovered a completely novel biological process. It increases our understanding of how viruses can manipulate biological membranes and will help the development of new drugs against poxviruses, commented professor Geoffrey Smith, from Imperial College London...." http://www.drugresearcher.com/news/ng.asp?id=67136-medulloblastoma-children-cancer "...The new method is set to particularly benefit children who often undergo chemotherapy that is unpredictable and dangerous to the individual. The technique aims to reduce this by locating specific pathways in cancer that might be vulnerable to novel therapies, speeding development of so-called molecular-targeted therapies for a wide variety of cancers. Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital believe that the ability to determine in individual children which biochemical signalling pathway triggers and sustains the cancer by identifying key genes that are linked to that pathway. The investigators proved that this strategy is valid by demonstrating that it is possible to assign children with medulloblastoma into specific groups, depending on which biochemical signalling pathway is abnormally active. Based on this classification, novel drugs designed to block a key protein in each specific pathway could be correctly administered to the children most likely to respond to them..." Here is one on an Isis Pharm's developing drug: http://www.drugresearcher.com/news/ng.asp?id=59704-isis-develops-antisense "The drug, ISIS 369645, is a second-generation antisense inhibitor of the alpha subunit of the interleukin 4 receptor, (IL4R-alpha)..." (Who discovered the molecule is not stated; research on interleukins has gone on in various institutes around the world for years.) One involving collaboration: http://www.drugresearcher.com/news/ng.asp?id=59601-blueprint-tool-points "25/04/2005 - A research program has released a small molecule binding annotation and comparison tool, which is expected to accelerate lead development in antimicrobial drug discovery, as well as allow chemists to develop safer, more specific herbicides and pesticides with fewer side effects. The Blueprint Initiative has released the tool, which is a result of data curated by the Protein Data Bank (PDB) and genomic sequences in GenBank, is an extension of Blueprint's Small Molecule Interaction Database (SMID). Blueprint's SMID-Genomes offer scientists a web-based interface to browse 9.4 million predicted small-molecule-protein binding interactions in an organism-specific manner. To construct this tool, Blueprint analysed NCBI's non-redundant sequence database to identify potential binding sites based on homology to known interactions using SMID-BLAST. "Traditional chemical screening methods used by pharmaceutical companies have focused on protein targets, so scientists have had to test thousands of compounds against each protein, often with little or no forethought of likely candidates," said Dr Hogue. "SMID-Genomes focuses on small molecules and scans fully or partially sequenced genomes for potential binding activity. The tool allows scientists to narrow down the possibilities and focus on the most likely candidates." The SMID-Genomes interprets nearly 400,000 proteins from more than 1500 completely sequenced bacterial, eukaryotic of viral organisms. The database is one of a number that is related to human health and disease as it spans a long list of sequenced pathogenic bacteria and infectious diseases. "But as the number of genomes sequenced and the catalogue of known protein-small molecule interactions grows in the PDB repository, so too will the power of the prediction tool," added Dr Hogue. The SMID-Genome uniquely incorporates a feature that allows scientists to simultaneously overlap the small-molecule binding behaviours of up to five organisms, permitting the direct comparison of different genomes. This website has a lot of info and tons of articles, BTW, which I will have to look at much more closely. Anyway, my point is that the big pharmas depend on various researchers and institutes for a fair amount of "their" drug discoveries. Debbi It Takes A Team Maru __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
