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Icos

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A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for January 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to get feedback on an article I've been working on. Hopefully I can take it to FAC after this.

Thanks, Shubinator (talk) 00:01, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Questions/comments for reviewers:

The layout of the article has been bugging me. Technically the whole article is History because the company is gone, but lumping everything together under History would look odd. Any suggestions? I was thinking maybe of making all the History subsections into their own sections, and renaming History to something else. I don't like "Early history" because it also covers George Rathmann leaving and Paul Clark taking over. It's really the non-science history of the company before the acquisition.
Since Icos is a defunct company, should the increasing, decreasing, and steady symbols in the infobox be taken out? They don't even reflect the company's health at the time of acquisition because the first quarterly profit was in 2006. I couldn't find an annual report for 2006, since the company would have filed it in March 2007, and that's after the acquisition.
I'd originally meant the section on Selectivity compared with other PDE5 inhibitors in the tadalafil article to be in the Icos article, but decided against it since it's more of a discussion on the compound's properties and doesn't mention the company at all. Any thoughts?
In the references, should I take out "The" from newspapers like "The New York Times" and "The Seattle Times"? I've seen both styles at the Obama article.
I got almost all of the newspaper articles from LexisNexis. If you want info from a particular source I can post the relevant parts.
Does the article stand a reasonable chance at FAC?

Thank you for your help! Shubinator (talk) 00:02, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from some nit-picking fool called Michael Devore per talk page request:

Re: "In addition to the termination of Icos employees, other aspects of the acquisition were similarly legal but controversial, such the assertions that Icos was being sold too cheaply and that conflicts of interests existed." There is a grammar problem here. I think you want it to read "such as assertions".

Done.

Re:"The latter related to Icos senior executives, who - despite poor stock performance in part from failed clinical development programs and an inability to successfully license drugs over the preceding years - advocated for and were to be massively compensated upon a successful acquisition." It looks like you're using a spaced normal dash instead of a spaced en dash for the interruptions. Use a spaced en dash per MOS:DASH guidelines (or unspaced em dash if you prefer).

Done.

Re: "In late 2006, researcher Michael Caplan planned to start clinical trials of Pafase for necrotizing enterocolitis." The date of that plan was over two years ago and seems stale to me. Did anything happen since?

Yeah, this has annoyed me too. The last newspaper article on Pafase (the one I've sourced) says that Caplan plans to start research. Then, silence. Presumably this is because of Icos's acquisition, which happened just weeks after the newspaper article was published. I'll try to look into it online. I know the researcher has published some journal articles since then; I'll try to decipher them. Shubinator (talk) 19:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Re: "Other drugs tested in clinical trials" subsection. Test successfully, unsuccessfully? If failures here contributed to Icos's later sale, it would be a useful thing to note.

Added "Icos tested many other drugs that were not approved." to start of subsection. No particular failure was Icos's downfall; rather, it was the track record of failed drugs.

Re: "With the failed clinical development of investigational therapies other than Cialis and that were solely owned by Icos (i.e., not part of any joint venture or partnership), Eli Lilly was in a prime position to purchase Icos." This starts OK by properly explaining Eli's position due to the failed development, but then goes klunk halfway through.

I suggest removing the part starting at "and that were solely owned" followed by the parenthetical comment. You can change it to something like "With the failed clinical development of solely-owned investigational therapies", and if you prefer the full detail, rework the removed part into a new sentence. You want to briefly establish that even though there were joint ventures and partnerships where the product did not fail, they were not enough to keep Icos from being bought by Eli Lilly.

I've reworded it. Actually, other than Cialis, there weren't any clinical trials for Icos drugs at the time Lilly made its first offer.ref And no other drugs had made it to the market. Shubinator (talk) 19:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Re: "Closing of the transaction for Eli Lilly to acquire Icos for $2.3 billion occurred on January 29, 2007." I'm not an anti-passive voice fanatic, but this could be punched up with a word reorder. Something like: "On January 29, 2007, Eli Lilly closed the transaction to acquire Icos for $2.3 billion." or "Eli Lilly closed the transaction... on January 29, 2007", depending on where you'd like to place the date.

Done.

Re:"Resistance to the new offer was voiced again by some large shareholders, and ISS again advised shareholders against accepting the offer, which it deemed as insufficient." The previous sentence said that ISS "pressured" Lilly to increase the offer, not that it advised shareholders against the offer. They aren't the same thing, so under the current structure, ISS cannot again advise shareholders against acceptance. If the pressure was advice to shareholders to reject, it needs to be explicitly stated for it to happen again.

Done.

Re: "As a result of the acquisition, Eli Lilly gained complete ownership of Cialis and promptly shut down Icos operations and employment of Icos personnel, except for 127 employees working at the biologics facility." Shut down employment of personnel sounds weird. I suggest adding to the sentence and not letting "shut down" flow through operations into employment.

Done. employment of >> laid off

Re: "A former Icos employee has said that the company did not achieve its full potential because of Paul Clark's leadership." Even sourced, this is a bit dubious to include in the article. Almost every company has unhappy ex-employees as a normal part of their operations. Consider, if possible, making this statement more noteworthy.

I changed "employee" to "manager"; the person quoted in the source was a manager. I'd like to keep the sentence in if possible. I'm confident that most former Icos employees would agree with the statement, and many employees would think the statement as it is is a gross understatement. And it's not just because of the acquisition; if you had asked employees before the news broke, they wouldn't be happy about Paul Clark. Shubinator (talk) 19:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Re: "Grassley's letter also suggested that Pfizer resisted adding the blindness warning to the Viagra's label." I think the the before "Viagra's" is superfluous.

Done.

Re: "During testing the number of patients given the drug was low because the LeukArrest had to be delivered within four hours of the injury and consent was required." As above, the the before LeukArrest seems superfluous to me. Is there a standard of putting the before drug names I'm missing?

Done.

Re: "In January 2006, the Cialis ads were tweaked, adding a doctor on screen to describe side effects and only running ads where more than 90 percent of the audience are adults, effectively ending Super Bowl ads." I think you want to say "were adults", unless the audience remains the same to this day, which would be hard to say without knowing more details on what that audience is.

I think they changed their policy to only advertise where more than 90% of viewers are adults. So if the audience changed, they would change their marketing accordingly. The source says, "Also, ads for Cialis are now running only in places where 90 percent or more of the audience members are adults, up from a previous minimum of 80 percent. Pfizer made the same change last fall for Viagra. The changes mean that commercials for Cialis and Viagra will not appear during Super Bowls, where children make up 10 percent to 15 percent of the audience each year." Shubinator (talk) 19:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Re: "While some people opposed waiving consent, the FDA approved the proposal in August 1998 for five medical centers." "Some people" is awfully nebulous. Some people oppose about anything you could name; I am related to one or two of those type of people. Can you nail down who those people were or why they were important to the opposition? Do you mean petitioners to the FDA or some such thing?

Done. people >> medical ethicists

Well, that's enough for me now. -- Michael Devore (talk) 12:36, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments! Feel free to make more. Shubinator (talk) 19:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Please give preference to using the International Nonproprietary Names of drugs, followed by the trade name(s) in parentheses, as . Example from the lead: "Icos is famous for developing the erectile dysfunction drug Cialis" would become "Icos is famous for developing the erectile dysfunction drug tadalafil (Cialis)". Several Featured articles use this format, such as Tourette syndrome and Sertraline. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 01:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Shubinator (talk) 02:57, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Casliber[edit]

I'll make some notes - Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:35, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Icos was the torchbearer of the biotechnology industry - eeww, not sure about the word "torchbearer" bit peacocky?

Changed to Icos was the largest biotechnology company in Washington state. Shubinator (talk) 06:09, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

brought Icos to profitability - odd wording but an alternative doesn't readily spring to mind. Know what you mean though.