> In the global industry, some of the best kept secrets are those necessary to make life-saving medication and other pharmaceutical products.<p>What? Patents are not secret. Patents are the opposite of secret. The very word "patent" means "open". Are drug patents some kind of trick to do the opposite of what a patent is supposed to do?<p>> However, when the researchers designated some atoms and bond as untouchable, the program proposed plans that avoided the patented ones.<p>Can someone explain just exactly how do drug patents work? Can this legally work? I understand that normally patents cover processes or working inventions. I didn't think that the precise chemical bonds were required to be produced in the final output of a patent.<p>Also, since apparently the researchers have read the patents in question and designed their software to produce drugs that avoid those patents, have they willfully infringed? Since they were aware of the patent and the process by which the drug worked, so using this knowledge they produced similar drugs that do the same thing?<p>I assume that the researchers know drug patent law well enough and are confident that their method avoids patents, so there's obviously a lot I don't understand.
Lots of misinformation in these comments. Both the process and end product are patentable, but some companies do not disclose their processes and opt to keep them as trade secrets.<p>As for the article, changing the molecule can have unpredictable effects on how the compound acts in the body. Even changing one bond/atom can result in dramatically different properties. The article doesn't address that.
Link to the paper: <a href="https://www.cell.com/chem/fulltext/S2451-9294(18)30567-9" rel="nofollow">https://www.cell.com/chem/fulltext/S2451-9294(18)30567-9</a>
But isn't a modified molecule a reformulation, which cannot be assumed to have the same effect, or dose-response, or even safety, as the original molecule? Say if you can synthesize something _like_ garblezolib or whatever, aren't you then faced with all the safety and effectiveness trials that were so expensive for the OEMs?
I love it when sci fi and sci fact seem to merge
<a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/09/20/548664924/in-a-future-ruled-by-big-pharma-a-robot-tentatively-explores-freedom-and-sex-aut" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2017/09/20/548664924/in-a-future-ruled-b...</a>
More on this: <a href="https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/01/18/automated-route-finding-and-patent-busting" rel="nofollow">https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/01/18/au...</a>
This article is not complete. In order for a drug to be approved by the FDA for a particular condition, it must demonstrate (through expensive clinical trials) superior efficacy to existing treatments unless the drug is considered a generic. It's hard to say if a drug with slight molecular modifications could be said to be a "generic" form of another. There's a good chance the answer would be no, because slight molecular modifications can cause significant differences in efficacy.
Some commentary from my favorite chem-blogger: <a href="https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/01/18/automated-route-finding-and-patent-busting" rel="nofollow">https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/01/18/au...</a><p>Sounds like this is for finding different synthetic routes to the same molecule. So it might help avoid method claims, but not claims for the product itself.