Power3 converts 'Biomarkers for Neurological Disease' provisionals

Four provisional applications claiming biomarkers used in diagnostic procedures for early detection of neurological disease filed by Power3 Medical Products have been converted to utility patent applications.

The filed patents aim to protect the diagnostic testing procedures utilized by the Company in identifying and tracking specific protein biomarkers that could lead to the early detection and diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease. The latest patent applications add to Power3's IP portfolio consisting of numerous patents filed over the last few years for disease biomarkers and diagnostic assays.

Medco reports $1.2 billion in EBIDTA for 2004

The flip side of all the articles bemoaning big pharma's loss of market to generics: the generic companies are reporting record earnings.

"We increased the efficiency of our operations and demonstrated the value to our clients and shareholders of higher mail order penetration and the use of lower-cost generic drugs. We believe there are opportunities to continue this progress over the next several years as the benefits of mail order are more broadly appreciated by the marketplace, and brand-name drugs lose their patent protection from generic equivalents," added Snow.

Neuronal cell differentation promoter patent granted to Regen Therapeutics

Regen markets it as Colostrinin, with potential applications in the treatment of Alzheimer's Disease.

The new patent covers the use of Colostrinin(tm), its constituent peptides and analogues to promote neuronal cell differentiation. The selective loss of nerve cells in the hippocampus, a region of the brain associated with memory, is a key feature in the pathogenesis of severe neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease. Consequently, any treatment that can stimulate the production and maturation of nerve cells may be useful in preventing or slowing these disease processes. Potential utility of this patent is expected to be welcomed by people with Alzheimer's disease, because "the invention provides a method to promote differentiation and subsequent conversion of potentially damaged cells to functional neuronal cells", said Dr. Kruzel, Scientific Consultant and Adjunct Professor at UT Medical School at Houston.

Motley Fool: Glaxo "above the fray"

The investment mavens at Motley Fool have good things to say about Glaxo, in part because of the relative lack of litigation against them.

Glaxo has certainly suffered from generic competition but has weathered the storm better than most. Trading at less than 17 times trailing earnings, the stock is cheaper than the average pharmaceutical company, yet still boasts high operating margins and one of the highest dividend yields in the industry.

Drug companies conducting private sting ops to collar pharma counterfeiters

Overseas manufacture and importation of pills that look like the real thing - but have different or no pharmaceutical value - has led Pfizer and other companies to conduct their own investigations and sting operations independent of legal authorities.

With a global security staff of 40 investigators, many of them former federal agents, Pfizer runs its anticounterfeiting operations from New York, London, and Hong Kong. Its investigators routinely make undercover buys from suspicious Internet sites in what Pfizer executives call ''surveys" of the market. The company then tests drugs it receives in the mail at a special lab it set up at its research headquarters in Groton, Conn.

When company officials think they have gathered enough information to establish probable cause for a criminal prosecution, they turn nearly complete cases over to foreign officials, US investigators, or local police.

Generic form of Levaquin approved by FDA

Teva's Levofloxacin, a broad-spectrum antibacterial agent generic competitor to Ortho McNeil's Levaquin, has been granted tentative approval by the FDA. Though with approval comes a 180-day window of generic drug exclusivity, Teva will not market until litigation with Ortho in the District of New Jersey is settled.

Teva noted that the total annual sales of the brand product, in both configurations, are approximately $220 million.

Pharma research stalling; science "hard"

"The low-hanging fruit is all gone, and the unique opportunities are difficult to come by," said Irwin Lerner, a former chief executive at Hoffmann-La Roche, a Swiss drug maker with U.S. headquarters in Nutley. "There's been a real failure that, despite billions of dollars in investment, research hasn't conquered the diseases that haunt us."

Or, as Woodcock, director of FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, says, "Some of these things are going to be really hard."

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Human-animal chimera patent denied

Stuart Newman had filed the application in an attempt to prevent others from creating such a hybrid; Newman himself had no intention of creating one. The PTO rejected the application on the grounds that it could cover creatures "too human to patent."

The paper trail created by the Newman claim offers perhaps the best explication yet for that ban. One rationale in the documents sent to Newman is that such a patent would be "inconsistent with the constitutional right to privacy." After all, the office wrote, a patent allows the owner to exclude others from making the claimed invention. If a patent were to issue on a human, it would conflict with one of the Constitution's core privacy rights -- a person's right to decide whether and when to procreate.

EPO reaffirms revocation of broad Viagra patent

The European Patent Office has reaffirmed a previous ruling revoking a broad Pfizer patent covering erectile dysfunction drugs, which Pfizer sought to use to keep Cialis and Levitra from competing with Viagra in Europe.

Anti-diabetes composition patent awarded to Akesis

The PTO has issued a new patent to Akesis Pharmeceuticals for compositions and methods of treatment for diabetes and other glucose metabolism disorders.

"We believe this patent, which combines Akesis' unique formula of anti-diabetic trace minerals with the widely prescribed sulfonylurea class of medications is an important step in our mission to develop innovative formulations for the treatment of diabetes," said President and CEO Edward B. Wilson. "Given the growing public health burden of diabetes and associated metabolic disorders, we are encouraged by the opportunity for a synergistic effect on improved glycemic control offered with this newly patented formulation."