Biotech Patent Bottleneck Harms Makers Of Better Mousetraps AUTHOR:RON COWEN Date: September 05, 1988 While the U.S. Patent Office fiddles, small firms lacking earnings records may be losing potential investors WASHINGTON—Chemist George Rathman won’t soon forget July 1, 1987, the day that the worth of his company’s stock dropped $10 million in six hours. President and CEO of Aragen Inc., an eight-year-old biotechnology firm in Thou- sand Oaks, Calif., Rathmann calls the ex

WASHINGTON—Recent increases in the number and type of longterm grants from the National Institutes of Health may intensify competition between new awards and grants continued from previous years. But officials say the self-limiting nature of the new longterm grants and new institute controls should prevent problems that forced elimination of seven-year awards in the 1970s. “In any given year, about 85 percent of the NIH budget is a commitment [to grants] from previous years,”

WASHINGTON—Taking its cue from recent studies that point to a funding gap in science education at liberal arts colleges, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has begun a program to upgrade science curricula at selected undergraduate institutions. HHMI has invited 76 liberal arts colleges not affiliated with any Ph.D.-granting university and 18 historically black colleges to compete for the grants, which will range from $500,000 to $2 million. The winners will be announced next sp

WASHINGTON—The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) next month will announce a $40 million-a-year program ranging from support for graduate training in the biomedical sciences to funding of health policy and cost-containment studies. Purnell Choppin, HHMI’s former vice president and chief scientific officer who was appointed president of the institute on September 1, said the education prograin will include funds to upgrade science departments at undergraduate colleges and sup

WASHINGTON—When Robert Coleman took the phone call, the University of California at Berkeley mathematician thought the official-sounding voice was a sales man. When he heard the words "MacArthur Foundation," he expected to be asked for a donation. But when program director Kenneth Hope told Coleman that he was one of 32 new MacArthur fellows and that he would receive $215,000 over the next five years, the message finally got through. By at least one measure, how ever, the 32-year-old Cole

WASHINGTON—Behind Donald Fredrickson's forced resignation June 2 as president and lifetime trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute lies a tale of budget overruns and unorthodox purchasing procedures that HHMI trustees and officials say stem from his wife's active and inappropriate role at the institute. "It's big and it's bad," said HHMI chairman George Thorn about the results of the six-month review conducted by the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, abo

WASHINGTON—The sudden and unexplained departure of Donald Fredrickson as president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute is due chiefly to conflicts arising from his wife's participation in HHMI activities that exceeded the normal bounds of a spouse's interests, say several longtime friends and colleagues. According to these associates, Fredrickson's wife has played an active role in certain affairs of the $5 billion organization since Fredrickson became affiliated with the institute in 1

WASHINGTON—The National Institutes of Health has halted further cuts in the size of new research grants, an action it took in response to a proposed cut in funding for this year, and begun to restore funds to grants that were reduced. On February 25 NIH reversed a decision, made January 21, that took between 4 and nearly 20 percent from each grant to make sure the agency did not run out of money before the end of the fiscal year September 30. The Reagan administration has proposed that $33

WASHINGTON—When Donald Armstrong of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and his collaborators began to search for compounds that could kill the AIDS virus, they took an increasingly popular approach to the development of anti-viral drugs: they designed their own. Since October the National Institutes of Health have spent or set aside about $25 million for projects like Armstrong‘s that take a targeted approach to developing drugs against AIDS. Most extramural funding for the p

WASHINGTON—NIH is cutting research grants to scientists by as much as 20 percent to keep in step with a Reagan budget proposal that is given little chance of being adopted this year by Congress. Lobbying organizations for the biomedical community are preparing to sue the government to halt what they claim is a violation of the wishes of Congress and of the appropriate procedure to achieve such spending reductions. The administration, believing Congress was overly generous to NIH, wants to

WASHINGTON—The idea of making American industry more competitive through increased support for industrial and academic research and development is becoming a rallying cry for high-powered lobbying efforts here. This winter has seen the birth of two privately funded, independent coalitions that unite members of high-tech industries, universities, trade associations and nonprofit organizations. It has also seen the formation of a 160-member Congressional Caucus on Competitiveness, and the in

WASHINGTON—The administration has proposed that the National Institutes of Health fund 700 fewer new and competing research grants this year as part of a plan to reduce the overall NIH budget in fiscal 1988. But it is unlikely that researchers will feel the pinch anytime soon. The proposal is part of a request to Congress to transfer $334 million already appropriated for this fiscal year. The present budget of $6.18 billion would drop by a corresponding amount, and the budget for next year