In this case it probably means a similar (but patented) molecule will probably be the first to market. It could also mean that their JQ1 inhibitor, while successful in model trials as a lead or tool compound, has already failed a preclinical test. Either way: 50:1 odds against a new drug candidate succeeding in preclinical trials, 10:1 odds against a new drug compound succeeding in clinical trials. 500:1 odds against success, on average. The big discovery here isn't the inhibitor they waived the rights to; it's the pathway and the target (which aren't patentable anyway).
You're just missing vision. Imagine Ubuntu Phone on an 8 core processor, you could have it run virtual machines and seamlessly switch between Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, IOS... who doesn't want that?
Someone who would prefer not to have to worry about the security holes on one OS, let alone four?
...and then someone made one with five blades, and it's better enough that people will buy it.
It's marketed enough that people buy it. If you actually need to shave near your nose it's pretty much useless. Excepting straight razors I've tried just about everything manual and electric; I'm sticking with a DE razor and a couple of drops of shave oil.
Actually I was thinking about having probes at several different wavelengths in the same sample - I was just to dense to realize that multiplexing would still work with the signal = no mutation, no signal = mutation format. Maybe that will be another paper/press release, one where they aren't focusing on low implementation costs (fixed wavelength fluorometer = $$, scanning fluorometer = $$$$)
I'm guessing their assay depends on quenching; if they had a choice they probably would have preferred a signal = positive, no signal = negative format in part for the reason you just gave. But FRET is tetchy and expensive. That will be the third paper;)
There's no genes to patent here, only a technique for identifying differences between strands of DNA and an artificially-created reference strand that's engineered to glow fluorescently.
Think of it as an efficient diff method for DNA that doesn't involve computationally-complex gene sequencing.
FTA:
The probe is engineered to emit a fluorescent glow if there’s a perfect match between it and the target. If it doesn’t illuminate, that means the strands didn’t match and there was in fact a mutation in the target strand of DNA..
So the technique will be limited to a single probe in each reaction. This could be great when all you want to check for is the presence of one or two specific mutations, but in most situations there are many different mutations that could be causing the same effect. You would have to run dozens of tests using this method to get that information. I don't see this as displacing methods that use arrays of DNA probes attached to chips: those let you check for hundreds of mutations or hundreds of species of pathogens all at the same time, but it might improve array techniques if these probes still work well when placed on arrays.
It sounds like they were using this as an excuse to buy new equipment, so they destroyed extra equipment hoping that someone would allow them to chalk up the expense to the virus and thus give them shiny new stuff.
Or one of the higher ups really wanted to destroy some of his files.
If textbook authors get beat out in price by other knowledgeable authors like that professor, they will lose sales.
Textbooks in the US aren't really price sensitive; learning institutions increasingly rely on revenue from their bookstores so their goal is to make students buy a full price textbook through an approved channel. The methods used to do this will keep getting more onerous, my guess is that more schools will require purchase of the textbook from the school bookstore (or through their affiliate link at Amazon) in order to stay registered in a class.
Let me get this straight: if all Al qaeda wanted was for us to cede control of half of the United States to them you would call it an "easy out"? And actually, yes, being left alone is exactly what they have always wanted. We are a target of Al Qaeda because of our actions in the Middle East. No armed forces in Saudi Arabia: No 9/11. If we let Israel sink, didn't fight the Gulf wars, didn't give aid to more moderate Middle Eastern governments, let the Taliban take over from Russia in Afghanistan: No Al Qaeda, at least as far as we're concerned. Not exactly an easy out, but a lot more like walking away from the Philippine American war as opposed to the Civil war.
You're worried about Salmonellosis? About 30 people die per year from salmonellosis vs about 20,000 from MRSA. If you're still more worried about Salmonella, you should appreciate banning of subtherapeutic antibiotics: anitbiotic resistant Salmonella is becoming increasingly common, including resistance to quinolones and even trimethoprim.
The only area where empirical evidence tends to show patents are necessary is to recoup development costs of pharmaceuticals. But drugs patents are only necessary to cover the marginal cost of adhering to strict government protocols; arguably we'd have a net social health benefit by relaxing the protocols, relaxing patents, and allowing more and cheaper drugs to reach the market.
I don't know about that. More drugs doesn't necessarily mean better drugs. Successfully navigating the government protocols also frees a drug maker of significant liability. Would or should drug makers still enjoy that freedom from liability if they haven't gone through the FDA approval process?
Personally, I think any relaxation in phase III clinical trials should be accompanied by strict requirements to run post-approval trials for efficacy and safety.
Expense: Yes, those techniques are more labor and/or equipment intensive than culturing. I'm going on the assumption that there are cases where having the answer in 3 hrs instead of 3 days would drastically improve the outcome. How about this: If the only benefit to getting the result 20-70 hrs sooner was that patients ended up spending one less day in an ICU, the technique would save money if it cost less than ~$5k.
Knowing what to look for: You can differentiate A LOT of pathogens using a single set of primers, PCR, and RFLP analysis: combining speciation/strain ID and quantification is another matter, true, but that's why I mentioned qPCR. ELISAs can pick up which toxins and how much of each are actually present in a septic patient.
But I blanked on what would probably work best: array based techniques. Arrays on chips can identify ~100 different bacterial resistance genes, or simultaneously look for all of the most commonly feared biowarfare bactera and viruses. Bead arrays can simultaneously identify species/strain and quantify them. These techniques can also identify strains and viruses that are difficult to culture.
This sounds like it may well be an interesting technique, but probably more for niche research uses than screening antibiotics. You could tell those e. coli cultures were full of live or dead bacteria just by swirling the test tubes and eyeballing them - ampicillin lyses the cells and makes the cultures look different. There are plenty of good, fast ways to screen for antibiotics that can be done with hundreds or thousands of samples at a time, as opposed to dedicating an atomic force microscope to each sample.
The plates are examined to determine if anything actually grew (may take up to 3 days for blood)
If something grew, two processes happen:
The culture is sent through a variety of tests (gram-stain, etc) to determine the species of bacteria which will dictate the next step.
The specimen is then re-suspended in a culture medium and plated and allowed to grow in the presence of antibiotics thus yielding that particular organisms antibiogram
A you can see, there really isn't anywhere to rush the process.
qPCR, RT-PCR, and/or ELISA tests to determine which bacteria are common and which antibiotic resistance genes are heavily expressed at the infection site or the blood stream. Would only take a few hours from taking the sample to having results, as opposed to 1-3 days to do a culture.
I'm not sure about their cosmetics strategy. The people most likely to be interested in "green" cosmetics are the ones most likely to be put off by genetically modified sources.
23&Me's tests say they're not for diagnostic use, but as far as I can tell from most of the articles on the topic, they have a bit more detail on breast cancer related genes than Myriad's,
For BRCA1 and 2 the real value add right now for Myriad's test is that they have spent the last fifteen years collecting variants and correlating them with cancer occurrence. No one else has that data right now. ClinVar (a public database) has about 1000 of the most common variants, but that's estimated to be about only 1% of Myriad's.
Actually the cDNAs are naturally occurring to some extent as pseudogenes. Three minutes on Google found me one for exons 5 and 6 of BRCA1 spliced together without the intron
So the situation right now is that a cDNA sequence is patentable to the extent it contains splice sites that don't occur naturally. If a sequence derived from a cDNA doesn't overlap one of the splice sites (most short probes do not) it's not patentable. If it overlaps one or more splice sites it may be patentable... but it may not.
The big question for me now is whether any courts will extend this precedent to patents on other types of natural products.
What's the "round trip" efficiency when it comes to using metal hydrides for storage? energy -> hydrogen -> metal hydride ->stuff happens ->electricity? If you're starting with waste heat and ending up with electricity then it's not exactly round trip, but you get the idea.
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In this case it probably means a similar (but patented) molecule will probably be the first to market. It could also mean that their JQ1 inhibitor, while successful in model trials as a lead or tool compound, has already failed a preclinical test. Either way: 50:1 odds against a new drug candidate succeeding in preclinical trials, 10:1 odds against a new drug compound succeeding in clinical trials. 500:1 odds against success, on average. The big discovery here isn't the inhibitor they waived the rights to; it's the pathway and the target (which aren't patentable anyway).
You're just missing vision. Imagine Ubuntu Phone on an 8 core processor, you could have it run virtual machines and seamlessly switch between Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, IOS... who doesn't want that?
Someone who would prefer not to have to worry about the security holes on one OS, let alone four?
...and then someone made one with five blades, and it's better enough that people will buy it.
It's marketed enough that people buy it. If you actually need to shave near your nose it's pretty much useless. Excepting straight razors I've tried just about everything manual and electric; I'm sticking with a DE razor and a couple of drops of shave oil.
Actually I was thinking about having probes at several different wavelengths in the same sample - I was just to dense to realize that multiplexing would still work with the signal = no mutation, no signal = mutation format. Maybe that will be another paper/press release, one where they aren't focusing on low implementation costs (fixed wavelength fluorometer = $$, scanning fluorometer = $$$$)
I'm guessing their assay depends on quenching; if they had a choice they probably would have preferred a signal = positive, no signal = negative format in part for the reason you just gave. But FRET is tetchy and expensive. That will be the third paper ;)
There's no genes to patent here, only a technique for identifying differences between strands of DNA and an artificially-created reference strand that's engineered to glow fluorescently.
Think of it as an efficient diff method for DNA that doesn't involve computationally-complex gene sequencing.
FTA:
The probe is engineered to emit a fluorescent glow if there’s a perfect match between it and the target. If it doesn’t illuminate, that means the strands didn’t match and there was in fact a mutation in the target strand of DNA..
So the technique will be limited to a single probe in each reaction. This could be great when all you want to check for is the presence of one or two specific mutations, but in most situations there are many different mutations that could be causing the same effect. You would have to run dozens of tests using this method to get that information. I don't see this as displacing methods that use arrays of DNA probes attached to chips: those let you check for hundreds of mutations or hundreds of species of pathogens all at the same time, but it might improve array techniques if these probes still work well when placed on arrays.
It sounds like they were using this as an excuse to buy new equipment, so they destroyed extra equipment hoping that someone would allow them to chalk up the expense to the virus and thus give them shiny new stuff.
Or one of the higher ups really wanted to destroy some of his files.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/01/official_purges_agency_computers/
PhD and PostDoc in chemistry in CA: at least half the American faculty, postdocs, and grad students had macbooks. Europeans and Asians less so.
Or a stick.
They've also made it much harder to steal a main battle tank. Hasn't happened near me for quite some time.
If textbook authors get beat out in price by other knowledgeable authors like that professor, they will lose sales.
Textbooks in the US aren't really price sensitive; learning institutions increasingly rely on revenue from their bookstores so their goal is to make students buy a full price textbook through an approved channel. The methods used to do this will keep getting more onerous, my guess is that more schools will require purchase of the textbook from the school bookstore (or through their affiliate link at Amazon) in order to stay registered in a class.
Let me get this straight: if all Al qaeda wanted was for us to cede control of half of the United States to them you would call it an "easy out"? And actually, yes, being left alone is exactly what they have always wanted. We are a target of Al Qaeda because of our actions in the Middle East. No armed forces in Saudi Arabia: No 9/11. If we let Israel sink, didn't fight the Gulf wars, didn't give aid to more moderate Middle Eastern governments, let the Taliban take over from Russia in Afghanistan: No Al Qaeda, at least as far as we're concerned. Not exactly an easy out, but a lot more like walking away from the Philippine American war as opposed to the Civil war.
You believe your government doesn't do the same, or wouldn't if it could? How quaint.
There's nothing random about it: the dosage is calculated so as to maximize animal weight at time of slaughter.
You're worried about Salmonellosis? About 30 people die per year from salmonellosis vs about 20,000 from MRSA. If you're still more worried about Salmonella, you should appreciate banning of subtherapeutic antibiotics: anitbiotic resistant Salmonella is becoming increasingly common, including resistance to quinolones and even trimethoprim.
The only area where empirical evidence tends to show patents are necessary is to recoup development costs of pharmaceuticals. But drugs patents are only necessary to cover the marginal cost of adhering to strict government protocols; arguably we'd have a net social health benefit by relaxing the protocols, relaxing patents, and allowing more and cheaper drugs to reach the market.
I don't know about that. More drugs doesn't necessarily mean better drugs. Successfully navigating the government protocols also frees a drug maker of significant liability. Would or should drug makers still enjoy that freedom from liability if they haven't gone through the FDA approval process?
Personally, I think any relaxation in phase III clinical trials should be accompanied by strict requirements to run post-approval trials for efficacy and safety.
Expense: Yes, those techniques are more labor and/or equipment intensive than culturing. I'm going on the assumption that there are cases where having the answer in 3 hrs instead of 3 days would drastically improve the outcome. How about this: If the only benefit to getting the result 20-70 hrs sooner was that patients ended up spending one less day in an ICU, the technique would save money if it cost less than ~$5k.
Knowing what to look for: You can differentiate A LOT of pathogens using a single set of primers, PCR, and RFLP analysis: combining speciation/strain ID and quantification is another matter, true, but that's why I mentioned qPCR. ELISAs can pick up which toxins and how much of each are actually present in a septic patient.
But I blanked on what would probably work best: array based techniques. Arrays on chips can identify ~100 different bacterial resistance genes, or simultaneously look for all of the most commonly feared biowarfare bactera and viruses. Bead arrays can simultaneously identify species/strain and quantify them. These techniques can also identify strains and viruses that are difficult to culture.
Coal plants are 30-45% efficient at turning coal into electricity; internal combustion engines max out at 17%.
This sounds like it may well be an interesting technique, but probably more for niche research uses than screening antibiotics. You could tell those e. coli cultures were full of live or dead bacteria just by swirling the test tubes and eyeballing them - ampicillin lyses the cells and makes the cultures look different. There are plenty of good, fast ways to screen for antibiotics that can be done with hundreds or thousands of samples at a time, as opposed to dedicating an atomic force microscope to each sample.
The process goes like this:
They are allowed to grow for (around) 24 hours
The plates are examined to determine if anything actually grew (may take up to 3 days for blood)
If something grew, two processes happen:
The culture is sent through a variety of tests (gram-stain, etc) to determine the species of bacteria which will dictate the next step.
The specimen is then re-suspended in a culture medium and plated and allowed to grow in the presence of antibiotics thus yielding that particular organisms antibiogram
A you can see, there really isn't anywhere to rush the process.
qPCR, RT-PCR, and/or ELISA tests to determine which bacteria are common and which antibiotic resistance genes are heavily expressed at the infection site or the blood stream. Would only take a few hours from taking the sample to having results, as opposed to 1-3 days to do a culture.
I'm not sure about their cosmetics strategy. The people most likely to be interested in "green" cosmetics are the ones most likely to be put off by genetically modified sources.
23&Me's tests say they're not for diagnostic use, but as far as I can tell from most of the articles on the topic, they have a bit more detail on breast cancer related genes than Myriad's,
For BRCA1 and 2 the real value add right now for Myriad's test is that they have spent the last fifteen years collecting variants and correlating them with cancer occurrence. No one else has that data right now. ClinVar (a public database) has about 1000 of the most common variants, but that's estimated to be about only 1% of Myriad's.
Actually the cDNAs are naturally occurring to some extent as pseudogenes. Three minutes on Google found me one for exons 5 and 6 of BRCA1 spliced together without the intron
So the situation right now is that a cDNA sequence is patentable to the extent it contains splice sites that don't occur naturally. If a sequence derived from a cDNA doesn't overlap one of the splice sites (most short probes do not) it's not patentable. If it overlaps one or more splice sites it may be patentable ... but it may not.
The big question for me now is whether any courts will extend this precedent to patents on other types of natural products.
They'd need at least 600 m^2 of solar panels (at noon) to power one 90kW supercharger.
Tesla will sell you a home connector that requires a 100 amp 220V circuit and puts out about 20kW. The superchargers are 90kW (250Amp at 400V).
What's the "round trip" efficiency when it comes to using metal hydrides for storage? energy -> hydrogen -> metal hydride ->stuff happens ->electricity? If you're starting with waste heat and ending up with electricity then it's not exactly round trip, but you get the idea.