In March 2012, the Future Science Group will launch a paper and online subscription journal, the Pharmaceutical Patent Analyst (PPA; ISSN 2046-8954). It will highlight and review patents of relevance to pharmaceutical science across all therapeutic areas, from small molecules to biologics. We are happy that H.M. Pharma Consultancy has been given the opportunity to establish a presence on PPA’s international editorial board, and to contribute content during the new journal’s formative first year. We congratulate the Future Science Group, which also publishes the journals Future Medicinal Chemistry, Clinical Investigation and Therapeutic Delivery, for its decision to join the pharmaceutical patent analysis publishing market. With Informa’s Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents and Bentham’s “Recent Patents on…” array of journals, this field is already well established and the New Kid On The Block will face some challenges – which can be mastered, provided that a distinctive and appealing profile is developed.
Under our current agreement we will publish 10-15 patent commentaries in each issue of PPA until January 2013. They will be much in the way of those you have become accustomed to on this blog but with significantly extended and deepened analysis.
However, this does not mean that we will abandon our monthly Patent Highlights. They will continue with a tighter focus as Drug Repurposing Patent Highlights, and instead of accumulating everything from the past month they will now be published under a news-driven schedule. These new Highlights will be shorter than before but will be published whenever a few remarkable IP documents claiming potential new applications for known drugs or drug candidates – under development, discontinued or marketed – cross our desks. That could mean two or even three such Highlights per month if ingenious people and diligent reviewers at the patent offices generate a swelling stream of such documents. But during slow times we will not bother you with trivialities, and then these posts might be five or six weeks apart.
These adaptive changes underscore our belief that finding new uses for known compounds holds tremendous potential which is only beginning to be tapped. Collaborative non-profit efforts are already successfully using this approach to make inroads towards new treatments for some of the so-called “neglected diseases,” such as malaria. For clever startup pharma enterprises with tight budgets but a lot of brainpower and out-of-the-box thinking, drug repurposing can be the Golden Way. In case you have forgotten, we have established a LinkedIn discussion group, “Drug repurposing – reprofiling – repositioning,” which currently has 286 members and will always accept more. And we are considering more plans.