Category Archives: BioTech/Pharma

Herbal/Vitamin Supplement Industry – Good or Bad?

On some interesting news I read a few months ago, Pfizer’s (a major pharmaceutical company) patent on its impotence drug Viagra has been partially rejected after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) said it wasn’t different enough from a … Continue reading

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Disease-causing agents – a potential source of medicine?

We can learn a lot from the world of parasites, which in general also includes bacteria, viruses and fungi. The medical profession has long focused on bacteria and viruses more-so than parasitic protozoa partly due to the fact of how … Continue reading

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Helping the poorest of the poor fight disease

Imagine living day to day in a place plagued by constant poverty and unimaginable disease. AIDS, African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), dracunculiasis (guinea worm disease), malaria, nodding syndrome, and onchocerciasis (river blindness) are some of the most common diseases the people … Continue reading

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Pharmacogenetics – The future of “Personalized Medicine”

European Americans are ten to forty times more likely than African Americans to get a very aggressive type of skin cancer called Melanoma. People of Asian descent are more likely to have the inability to process alcohol efficiently – exposing … Continue reading

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Pharma Mega-Mergers: When you can’t innovate, merge

In April of 2009, Pfizer agreed to buyout Wyeth for $68 billion; Pfizer’s market cap at that time was just around $100 billion. The following month Merck trumped the Pfizer deal with a $41 billion merger with Schering-Plough. What was … Continue reading

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