Thursday, January 10, 2008

Current federal legislation on neglected diseases builds on Duke research

"A comment by U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) in Health Affairs highlights research by David Ridley, Henry Grabowski, and Jeffrey Moe. Current federal legislation (the Food and Drug Administration Revitalization Act of 2007) incorporates the Duke professors' proposal that the FDA create 'priority voucher reviews' for pharmaceutical companies that introduce drugs fo neglected or tropical diseases, as an alternative to extended patent life."

Text of comment

Virtuous cycles versus strategic constraints: Collaboration is a two-edged sword

"Interfirm collaboration can either enhance or constrain business growth. Kulwant Singh (National University of Singapore) and Will Mitchell (Duke) show that collaboration often creates a ""virtuous cycle"" in which strong businesses become stronger by attracting good partners. By contrast, though, new businesses that rush into partnerships with strong partners often face constraints in expanding beyond the boundaries that their strong partners impose."

Summary

"Priority review vouchers" would create incentives to develop drugs for neglected diseases

A paper by David Ridley, Henry Grabowski, and Jeffrey Moe (Duke) proposes that the FDA create "priority voucher reviews" for pharmaceutical companies that introduce drugs fo neglected or tropical diseases, as an alternative to extended patent life.

Paper

How valuable are patents?

A recent working paper by Ashish Arora (Carnegie Mellon), Marco Ceccagnoli (Georgia Tech), and Wesley Cohen (Duke), uses survey data to estimate the degree to which patents add value to inventions, and then to assess the impact of any patent premium on R&D spending.

Summary

Do Patents Constrain Innovative Activity in Biomedical Research

A series of papers by Wesley Cohen (Duke), John Walsh and collaborators Ashish Arora and Charlene Cho, show that, despite recent concern that patents might limit innovative activity by reducing biomedical researchers' access to knowledge inputs, patents actually create relatively few constraints.

Summary