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Wednesday
BILL GATES BEHIND POTENTIAL MS DRUGS IN PIPELINE:
"The $2.1 billion acquisition of Icos Corp. is interesting on many levels." "The company's largest investor is Bill Gates, the billionaire founder and chairman of Microsoft Corp. Gates holds 10 percent of Icos' equity." ......Icos already has hired 23 Ph.D.s to search for new treatments for rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, asthma and other inflammatory diseases." About 40 employees, including research teams, have already been hired. The company plans to start operations with 65, he said. Researchers have been recruited from across the country, he said, including the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The company is focusing on finding a ''new generation of biopharmaceutical products for some of the most intractable human diseases,'' including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and asthma, Nowinski said. Competitors have mainly tried to treat the symptoms of the so-called inflammatory diseases, he said. ''There's a very large market there, but it doesn't really address the underlying problems.'' Icos plans to develop biological and pharmaceutical products that will arrest disease in the early stages, he said. CLICK FOR FULL ARTICLE |