Yesterday's AbbVie announced that it was purchasing Silicon Valley based Pharmacyclics for a vertigo inducing price of $21B. There was lots of speculation that that AbbVie is was filling its product pipeline was its patent for the anti-inflammatory drug Humara is losing its patent protection next year.
The abstract is that AbbVie gets Imbruvica, one of the world's best selling cancer drug. The best quote in the coverage explaining what Pharmacyclics was and why it was worth $21B was this one,
"It bought the molecule that became Imbruvica during a fire sale by gene-sequencing company Celera Genomics in 2006."
Buying a molecule. A patented molecule.
Along the line of really tiny stuff you need a really powerful microscope or a really vivid imagination to see, this week a new patent in the nanomedicine space was awarded to the Colorado School of Mines. Yes, that is correct, the Colorado School of Mines. US Patent 8,968,705 was granted on Tuesday.
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| Gold Nano Particle |
Gold nanoparticles (GNP) are really good contrast agents for CT and MRI diagnostic imaging improve contrast. GNPs could be useful in the field of molecular imaging to give in vivo information on the metabolic activity of cancer and the expression of molecular markers, or in normal speak, these little particles can find their way to cancerous tumors so the clinicians on the outside can figure out that's going on in there. GNPs may also be great for drug delivery and treatment at the molecular level.
There are lot of other interesting things going on in Colorado this week. Explore the Coming Soon Digest for Colorado or if you would like to tour around the US, click here and pick a state.
