Icos was the largest biotechnology company in the U.S. state of
Washington before it was sold to Eli Lilly and Company in 2007.
Co-founded in 1989 by George Rathmann, a pioneer in the industry and
co-founder of Amgen, Icos focused on the development of drugs to treat
inflammatory disorders. During its 17-year history, the company
conducted clinical trials of 12 drugs, three of which reached the last
phase of clinical trials. Icos is famous for tadalafil (Cialis), a drug
used to treat erectile dysfunction. This drug was discovered by
GlaxoSmithKline, developed by Icos, and manufactured and marketed in
partnership with Eli Lilly. Boosted by a unique advertising campaign
led by the Grey Worldwide Agency, sales from Cialis allowed Icos to
become profitable in 2006. Cialis was the only drug developed by the
company to be approved. LeukArrest, a drug to treat shock, and Pafase,
developed for sepsis, were both tested in phase III clinical trials,
but testing was discontinued after unpromising results during the
trials. Eli Lilly acquired Icos in January 2007, and most of Icos's
workers were laid off soon after. CMC Biopharmaceuticals, a Danish
contract manufacturer, bought the remnants of Icos and retained the
remaining employees.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icos>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1781:
German-born British astronomer and composer William Herschel discovered
the planet Uranus while in the garden of his house in Bath, Somerset,
England, thinking it was a comet.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus>
1845:
German composer Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, one of the most
popular and most frequently performed violin concertos of all time, was
first played in Leipzig, with violinist Ferdinand David as soloist.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violin_Concerto_%28Mendelssohn%29>
1943:
The Holocaust: Nazi troops under SS Hauptsturmführer Amon Göth began
liquidating the Jewish Ghetto in Kraków, Poland, sending about 8,000
Jews deemed able to work to the Plaszow labor camp. Those deemed unfit
for work were either killed or sent to die at the Auschwitz
concentration camp.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_Ghetto>
1954:
Viet Minh forces under Vo Nguyen Giap unleashed a massive artillery
barrage on the French military to begin the Battle of Dien Bien Phu,
the climactic battle in the First Indochina War.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dien_Bien_Phu>
1996:
In the deadliest attack on children in the history of the United
Kingdom, a spree killer killed sixteen children and a teacher at a
primary school in Dunblane, Scotland, before committing suicide.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
dissociate (v):
1. To make unrelated; to sever a connection; to separate.
2. To part; to stop associating.
3. (chemistry) To separate compounds
into simpler component parts, usually by applying heat or through
electrolysis
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dissociate>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of
enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing — even
fugitively — in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world.
Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the
surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight
impossible to suspect, of the lived instant.
--Mircea Eliade
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade>
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