Science and engineering usually create consistent results. Generally, when you figure out how to make something, you can repeat that at will to make more of something. But what if, one day, you ran the same process, and got different results? You double-checked, and triple-checked, and you kept ending up with a different end product instead?
Perhaps it wasn’t the process that changed, but the environment? Or physics itself? Enter the scary world of disappearing polymorphs.
Love it or loathe it, the pharmaceutical industry is really good at protecting its intellectual property. Drug companies pour billions into discovering new drugs and bringing them to market, and they do whatever it takes to make sure they have exclusive positions to profit from their innovations for as long a possible. Patent applications are meticulously crafted to keep the competition at bay for as long as possible, which is why it often takes ages for cheaper generic versions of blockbuster medications to hit the market, to the chagrin of patients, insurers, and policymakers alike.
Drug companies now appear poised to benefit from the artificial intelligence revolution to solidify their patent positions even further. New computational methods are being employed to not only plan the synthesis of new drugs, but to also find alternative pathways to the same end product that might present a patent loophole. AI just might change the face of drug development in the near future, and not necessarily for the better.
Continue reading “AI Patent Trolls Now On The Job For Drug Companies”
Would you strap a tiny pump to your body and let it dose you with medication based on your current vital signs? Most people wouldn’t, while some would appreciate the convenience, and many have no choice. [M. Bindhammer]’s 2017 Hackaday Prize entry, dubbed Sense-Aid, seeks to democratize the drug delivery process somewhat by building a sensor package linked to a tiny surface-mount pump into a single wearable device.
His chosen initial therapeutic area is fever, given that it’s easy to diagnose non-invasively with a simple thermistor and straightforward to treat with antipyretics like acetaminophen. Aside from the obvious regulatory hurdles such a device would face, he’s got a bunch of technical challenges to address. Surprisingly, sourcing a surface-mount pump is not one of them, although finding a medication to pump with it is. Anecdotally, a professor acquaintance of ours used to relate his sure-fire hangover cure: an aspirin tablet dissolved in the polar aprotic solvent dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and absorbed directly through the skin for immediate relief. The story may have been apocryphal, and it certainly sounds like a bad idea, but such solvents may be one way of pumping medications non-invasively.
Obviously, this is only a concept at this point, as [M. Bindhammer] hasn’t even built a prototype yet. But that’s exactly what the first phase of the 2017 Hackaday Prize is all about: Design Your Concept. It may seem like a crazy idea, but at least it’s an idea, and that’s the first step. Have you submitted your idea yet? There’s still plenty of time.
In what some might call a sensationalist article, USA Today reporter [Kim Komando] warns parents of a new danger to their kids: digital drugs. Throughout the article, [Kim] tries to explain how binaural beats (idosers) can effect the brain in many different ways, claiming that some even emulate the effects of illegal drugs. Furthermore, she claims that the “digital drugs” can act as a gateway to trying real drugs. While it seems unapparent to [Kim] that I-Doser has been around for years, it’s not surprising that this article is only being published now. While I understand her argument, parts of it just seem illogical. If anything, wouldn’t binaural sounds provide kids an alternative to illegal drugs? If these sounds really provide the same effects as drugs, wouldn’t they act as a safer option to kids? While this story seems to be one of many sensational stories warning parents to protect their kids, it seems as though parents should really be warned about these sensational stories that are concocted solely to sell newspapers.
[via Woot]
[photo: BrittneyBush]
