News by Subject Policy & Ethics

A new drug candidate is more likely to be approved for use if it targets a gene known to be linked to the disease; a finding that can help pharmaceutical companies to focus their drug development efforts. Emily King and colleagues from AbbVie report these findings in a new study published Dec. 12 in PLOS Genetics.

A recent letter in Science cited a lack of alternatives to trophy hunting. The authors suggested that bans on imports of hunting trophies would undermine biodiversity conservation efforts, but offered weak evidence of any positive conservation gains specific to trophy hunting. In a response published in the October 25, 2019 issue of Science, a group of scientists summarize evidence of negative effects of trophy hunting and offer more viable and equitable options.

Startups and entrepreneurs should spend the effort and money to obtain trademarks, because trademarks help them succeed in both product and financial markets, researchers say. Their paper, 'Trademarks in Entrepreneurial Finance,' is the first to study the role of trademarks for entrepreneurial firms, as most existing studies have focused on the role of patents. Trademarks help firms attract financing and are an important predictor of their success, both as private and public firms, they found.

Some pesticide companies may put profit ahead of protecting the public from potential harms. By acquiring regulations that ban older, out-of-patent products, innovative companies can make room for more expensive, patented alternatives.

Scientists have developed a large-scale economical method to extract hydrogen (H2) from oil sands (natural bitumen) and oil fields. This can be used to power hydrogen-powered vehicles, as well as to generate electricity; hydrogen is regarded as an efficient transport fuel, similar to petrol and diesel, but with no pollution problems. The process can extract hydrogen from existing oil sands reservoirs. Interestingly, this process can be applied to mainstream oil fields, causing them to produce hydrogen instead of oil.

New research featured in Nature Biotechnology studies the impact of the funding by the National Institutes of Health in the field of cancer research. Using patents as proxies, it finds evidence for a productivity slowdown around 1995. The study suggests that the results are in line with an incremental, rather than a high-risk high-rewards funding strategy by the federal agencies.

US hospitals wait over a year on average to begin prescribing newly developed antibiotics, a delay that might threaten the supply or discourage future development of needed drugs, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study.

A quantitative analysis going back over a period of more than 90 years shows that almost a third of patents in the US rely on federal research funding.