The Life Sciences in New York State

Do you need access to CROs in India? I can help.

I will on occasion help my clients identify and develop relationships with contract research and services firms in India. It never occured to me until recently that many US-based companies really struggle with this.

In my experience, the keys to success are:

1. Ignore any preconceived (or ill conceived) notions about the quality of the work that will be done, the language issues, the time zone issues, etc. All the folks I've ever worked with in the Indian life sciences sector are very professional, highly skilled, highly educated, and keenly interested in growing their business by serving their clients (you) well.

2. Start small. Find one or two small projects and begin to develop a relationship with one or more CROs. Grow the relationship from there.

3. Don't let concerns about the loss of IP hinder you. It's a valid concern, but only if you choose to work with people that are not ethical. That's just as true here as it is there. Nobody wins when IP is stolen.

What's available? You name it:

>Discovery services
>Lead optimization
>Assay development
>Any Preclinical animal model you can think of
>Clinical data management
>Market research services

The list goes on and on.

If you need help, send me a note and I'll try to steer you in the right direction.

The Patent System - I don't get it...

A Belgian company has been awarded a patent which covers any screening process using the ORL1 receptor. Presumably, if any company or individual wants to screen drugs using this particular receptor, they would have to pay Euroscreen a licensing fee.

But isn't the idea of using a receptor to screen drugs obvious, and hence not patentable? I agree that a particular assay or set of reagents or a set of ligands are patentable. But a receptor? Can I go out and write a patent application that says I've "discovered" that I can use the 5HT1D receptor to screen for drugs to treat migraine?

Note that they are not claiming discovery, only use in screening.

Somebody help me out here...

Euroscreen - Drug Discovery Company

Euroscreen SA today announced that it has been issued an U.S. patent that covers the use of an important human neurology drug target. The receptor, a G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) known as the human nociceptin (ORL1) receptor, is implicated in the control of some key neurological processes, such as pain perception, analgesia, and anxiety. Euroscreen’s patent protects any screening process using this receptor in order to find compounds that modulate its activity, and thus may have pharmaceutical potential.

All is not lost...

Pfizer Cites Positive Lipitor Data

Drug developer Pfizer Inc. said Monday that two imaging studies showed that higher doses of the statin Lipitor stopped the progression of atherosclerosis in patients with coronary heart disease... The studies had been designed to test the effectiveness of the torcetrapib, which was canceled as a cholesterol drug candidate after a trial experienced a number of complications including an unexpected number of patient deaths.

More data on virus-cancer link...

...from Cold Spring Harbor Labs.

How common viruses can turn cells cancerous

It is well known that certain viruses can trigger specific cancers. Human papillomavirus, for example, causes around 93 per cent of cancers of the cervix. Now Dominik Duelli and Yuri Lazebnik at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and colleagues have found evidence for how they might do it.