RE:RE:My Takeaways Mugsy, I believe this falls under the category of new research as now listed in the Corporate Presentaion slide. Dan discussed IBD during BioPub when talking about new applications.. He mentioned that this is an area worth exploring, that AHI currently holds a related patent, and this would be an appropriate area in which to task the new chemist.
The following is an excerpt from the related patent (8114858):
Derivatives of 4- or 5-aminosalicylic acid
Dec 29, 2010 - Antibe Therapeutics Inc.
The present invention provides new derivatives of 4- or 5-aminosalicylic acid, and a pharmaceutical composition containing these derivatives of 4- or 5-aminosalicylic acid as active ingredients, useful for the treatment of intestinal diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and for the prevention/treatment of colon cancer.
So its's likely an additional initiatve and not a replacement for the current pipeline.
With ATE sponsoring the chemist's research and therefore owning any new IP, this would be one example where overlapping IP claims with AHI would exist, thus a desire to unify AHI/ATE's respective IP suites.
I have been thinking about the upcoming dose selection. FDA requires only superior efficacy against placebo, hence the incentive to choose the lowest effacious dose for safety reasons.
But the European Medicines Agency requires an additional trial to show non-inferiority against Naproxen, or another NSAID, hence an incentive to choose a higher dose.
As Jay Lenold once said in a skit about viaga, when commenting that viagra can cause blindness: "Tough Choice"