A time honored function of marketing is to take problems and make them into features.
When I went to Cutter (Bayer), Sanzoz (Novartis) was eating the company alive. Cutter had produced an intravenous, polyclonal immunoglobulin from pooled plasma. Such preps were new. Traditional intramuscular preps were very good at non-specific activation of complement, and i.v. admin was a good way to off a patient. For Rathman knows what reason, Cutter had developed a mild reduction procedure, while Sandoz was using low pH. The Sandoz sales team was eating Cutter alive, indicating to physicians that the reduced prep didn't contain any IgG3. I pointed out that matter could not be created or destroyed, and that the IgG3 was still there. Nonetheless, classical procedures could not detect it.
I therefore screened several G3-specific monoclonals, looking for one that reacted with an epitope that wasn't blown to smithereens (let's see that one get through spell check). No luck. I did, however, find a G1/G3-crossreactive MAb that did react with the prep. I depleted the prep of all G1 and showed that it no longer reacted with G1-specific MAbs. It still reacted with the G1/G3-reative MAb, however. Presto, formal proof that matter had not been destroyed, that G3 was still in the prep.
Marketing was overjoyed. We published a manuscript. The major lesson of the manuscript, of course, was that the Cutter procedure was NUTS.
Sandoz backed off of their claims. Go figure. |
