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Contents    
Patent Use
Patent Search
Hyderabad Chemistry
Drugs for World's Poor
Malaria
Cervical Cancer Vaccine
Pharmaceuticals

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Patent Use
Success in the knowledge economy is a function of accessing and exploiting information, of which patents are rich storehouses. Patents are exclusive repositories of 80% of the world's known technical information, and are good resources for market/company strategy, industry trends, key industry human resources, company alliances, to name a few. Because patents are granted each week worldwide, businesses that have the most recent, complete and relevant information are well ahead of the curve.

Patent-savvy businesses generate greater value with patents by:

    *  Practicing them to protect products and technology
    *  Utilizing them to control markets
    *  Licensing them for revenue
    *  Managing them to push corporate strategy
    *  Leveraging them in partnerships and alliances
    *  Asserting them in patent litigation
    *  Collateralizing them to raise capital
    *  Mining them for the industry's key inventors

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Patent Search
Derwent World Patents Index® (DWPI®) will soon include Indian patent data, of both pre-grant applications and granted patents.  The inclusion of Indian patents in DWPI follows the culmination of the government’s long process of amending India’s national patent laws to ensure they conform to Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) norms. This addition is significant for DWPI because it is expected that Indian patent activity will increase dramatically, particularly in the fields of pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and information technology.  Despite the resistance from some quarters in India and world,  India has now become a major player in the IP arena and no one can stop India's strides towards technological supremacy.

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Hyderabad Chemistry
Early this month, at Venkataramarao Alla (AVR)'s birthday party, Nobel Laureates like Sharpless and Tanaka were present. Eminent chemists like Fleming, Ley and Davies were also present along with hundreds of IICT graduates.  Events included a symposium and a factory opening.  This event shines light on AVR's success story and indicates that Hyderabad (i.e., India) has traveled a long way in the past 15 years. 

After opening up of Indian economy in early 90s, within decade or so, Hyderabad has distinguished itself as a producer of chemicals and pharmaceuticals (and engineers) and placed itself on the world map.  Despite misgivings, misinformation and propaganda against product patent regime, India has entered a new era this year paving the way for a new super power - the Indian Union.

Contributions of dedicated entrepreneur-scientists like AVR have paved the way for such accomplishments.  India has the potential to take over the world with its new products in about 15 years (or even less) if they implement a strict product patent regime that will bolster research and indigenous development of new products in every field.  It is important to note that the supremacy of the United States is due to its technological supremacy driven by the product patent regime and its military supremacy. 

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Drugs for World's Poor
Conditions that kill millions of people in the developing world every year have long been ignored by not only by Western firms since medicines to fight them make no money, but also by third world firms, because there was no incentive for them to develop new drugs.

Now, however, the emergence of a new kind of public-private partnership and the creation of novel funding institutions such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, in addition to the new product patent regimes in countries like India, may be moving the goalposts. According to the non-profit group Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), which was founded in 2003 by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, a mere 10 percent of health research resources go into diseases accounting for 90 percent of the global disease burden.

Companies are learning that the consumers of the future live in India, Asia, Latin America and Africa.  In April, DNDi unveiled its first commercial development success after linking with Sanofi-Aventis SA to bring a new anti-malaria pill to market in 2006.  GlaxoSmithKline Plc, meanwhile, is outlining its plans this week to work in partnership with various groups to develop new medicines for a range of tropical diseases, including malaria and tuberculosis.  Novartis AG has a new tropical disease research centre in Singapore, AstraZeneca Plc is working on tuberculosis in India and Pfizer Inc runs an infectious diseases institute in Uganda.

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Malaria
The Lancet medical journal said in April a global partnership of more than 90 organizations and countries to reduce deaths from malaria may have done more harm than good.  It said rates of infection and deaths from the disease had actually risen since the Roll Back Malaria partnership, which includes the World Bank and World Health Organization, pledged to cut them in 2000. The World Bank announced it will expand its fight against malaria, one of Africa's biggest killers, because global efforts in the past five years have failed.  The World Bank report said Africa was the worst affected region, followed by India, Southeast Asia, the eastern Mediterranean region, and western Pacific. It said malaria had made a resurgence because of resistance to traditional first-line treatments such as chloroquine and sulfadoxine pyrimethamine. The World Bank's new strategy includes a special task force to ensure that antimalarial efforts are part of its lending programs for poor countries. It also includes additional funding to replicate in other countries antimalarial programs that have been successful in Brazil, Eritrea, India and Vietnam, the report said.  The bank hopes the international community could help make the new and effective artemisinin-based combination therapy more available to the poor and invest more in research on a possible malaria vaccine, the report said.

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Cervical Cancer Vaccine
An international study published in the British journal The Lancet Oncology found that the new version of the experimental vaccine Gardasil blocked about 90 percent of infections with four human papillomavirus (HPV) types, in the short term. During two-and-a-half years of follow up, none of the women who got the vaccine developed cervical cancer, precancerous lesions or genital warts. The study looked at 552 women aged 16 to 23, in the United States, Europe and Brazil, half of who got the vaccine while the others got a placebo. The Gardasil vaccine, developed by Merck & Co., is designed to prevent infection with HPV 16, 18, 6 and 11. HPV 16 and 18 cause most cases of cervical cancer, while HPV types 6 and 11 are more responsible for noncancerous genital warts.

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Pharmaceuticals
Pharmaceuticals improve health. We now have more medicines and better medicines for more diseases than ever before. However, America also overindulges far too often, forgetting, "all drugs are poisonous!" About 130 million Americans swallow, inject, inhale, infuse, spray, and pat on prescribed medication every month, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention indicates. Americans buy much more medicine per person than any other country.  The number of prescriptions has swelled by two-thirds over the past decade to 3.5 billion yearly, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical consulting company.  Americans devour even more nonprescription drugs, polling suggests.  Recently, safety questions have beset some depression and anti-inflammatory drugs, pushing pain relievers Vioxx and most recently Bextra from the market. Rising ranks of doctors, researchers and public health experts are saying that America is overmedicating itself.  It is buying and taking far too much medicine, too readily and carelessly.  Well over 125,000 Americans die from drug reactions and mistakes each year, according to Associated Press projections from landmark medical studies of the 1990s. That could make pharmaceuticals the fourth-leading national cause of death after heart disease, cancer and stroke.   The pharmaceutical industry served up more than $250 billion worth of sales last year, the vast majority in prescriptions, according to industry consultants. That roughly equaled sales at all the country's gasoline stations put together, or an $850 pharmaceutical fill-up for every American.

Federal regulators have told the makers of the popular drugs Levitra and Zyrtec to pull some advertisements the regulators said made unsubstantiated claims. The commercial for Levitra, an erectile dysfunction drug, features a woman praising the drug, and, according to the FDA, implying that her sexual experience with her partner was satisfying as a result of her partner's use of Levitra. She says the drug is "the best way to experience the difference." The FDA said this is an unprovable claim. The commercial also fails to highlight side effects and FDA warnings, the agency said. The ads for Zyrtec compare two people; one obviously sick, sneezing or wiping her nose, and another who looks perfectly healthy. The captions of the ads imply that the healthy and alert-looking person has taken Zyrtec; the sickly and unhappy one has taken a different medication.  The FDA said it "is not aware of substantial evidence or substantial clinical experience demonstrating that Zyrtec is clinically superior" to any other available over-the-counter or prescription allergy medicine.

Vepachedu Educational Foundation, Inc Copyright Vepachedu Educational Foundation Inc., 2004.  All rights reserved.  All information is intended for your general knowledge only and is not a substitute for medical advice or treatment for special medical conditions or any specific health issues or starting a new fitness regimen. Please read disclaimer.