Imclone: Corporate Scandal

ImClone is a healthcare company in the biotechnology and drugs industry. This corporation deals with the development of life saving, life altering, and life prolonging drugs for people with a variety of cancers. ImClone is in the same biotechnology research fields as the other drugs companies such as Medarex Incorporated, Abgenix Incorporated, Amgen Incorporated, Genentech, Incorporated, OSI Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, CancerVax Corporation, Onyx Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, Ariad Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, Pfizer Incorporated, and Vion Pharmaceuticals Inc. Being in the same sector as these other massive companies, ImClone is just as large but significantly younger. The oncology field of companies has dramatically heightened in the past twenty five years as a direct result of the population increase being directly correlated with the heightened cancer diagnosis. ImClone was and still is the hottest young biotechnology firm in the market (Reuters.com).

ImClone was founded by Sam Waksal in 1982 as an effort to help close acquaintances of his deal with their newly diagnosed infectious diseases. Samuel D. Waksal was born on september 8, 1947 in Paris, France. Samuel and his parents moved from France to the United States of America where he attended Ohio Statue University. He graduated with a premedical degree in 1967. Sam Waksal attended Ohio State University Medical School where in 1974 he graduated with a doctor of philosophy degree in 1974.

Incorporated on April 26, 1984, Mr. Samuel D. Waksal and his ImClone company began developing a portfolio of targeted biological treatments designed to address the medical needs of patients with cancer (Reuters.com). ImClone uses two very distinct systems for treating certain forms of terminal cancers: growth factor blockers and angiogenesis inhibitors. The growth factor blocker systems concentrates on mutating the proteins called kinases that are found in cancer cells that allow the cancerous cells to never stop reproducing, in essence developing tumors. ImClone's angiogenesis inhibitors system for treating cancer deals with the formation of new blood vessels. The word "Angiogenesis" means new blood vessels. Angiogenesis is a natural process in which your body creates chemicals that produce new blood vessels, angiogenesis inhibitors are chemicals that signal for you body to stop producing new blood vessels. Each process takes place in the body when new blood vessels are made. Angiogenesis is a crucial factor in the spread of cancer, blood vessels feed all cells, including cancer cells with oxygen and nutrients. ImClone has began to find ways to introduce the angiogenesis inhibitors to the cancer causing cells. Their systems deals with killing the cancer cells by depleting them of oxygen and depriving them of nutrients. They have begun to find ways to literally starve cancer cells (NationalCancerInstitute.com). These two systems have always been the staple of ImClone's research and development.

Imclone Systems conducts business from two major locations. The company's corporate and scientific headquarters are located at 180 Varick Street in New York City. Their corporate and scientific headquarters have been at this location since 1986, basically since the start of the company. The other location, which is in Branchburg, New Jersey, houses the manufacturing, product development, finance, clinical, regulatory and quality assurance and commercial operations departmens (Imclone.com). These two locations have been the only two locations that the ImClone Systems Company has ever operated from.

In the early years of the company, approximately from about the mid 1980's to the early 1990's, ImClone focused on immunology- based diagnostics and infectious disease vaccines (ImClone.com). Immunology is the branch of biomedicine concerned with the structure and function of the immune system, innate and acquired immunity, the bodily distinction of self, and laboratory techniques involving the interaction of antigens with specific antibodies (National Cancer Institute.com). They made/ make vaccines that when injected into the body, made the body become accustom to a low dosage virus or disease so when exposure to the actual virus of disease occurred, the body could not contract it fully.

The company's efforts led to the United States Food and Drug Administration approving several diagnostic methods and vaccines, all of which were licensed to major pharmaceutical companies. This is where the growth of the company took place. When the United States Food and Drug Administration approved their systems and vaccines, their stock prices soared. This was the first major accomplishment toward the ImClone Company being a massive success. During the early 1990's, the company's focus shifted away from diagnostics and infectious disease vaccinations to the development of a pipeline of innovative, biologic compounds in the area of oncology (ImClone.com), the branch of medicine that deals with tumors, including study of their development, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention (National Cancer Institute.com).

This brings us to the present day fields that the ImClone Systems company has a grasp on: colorectal cancer, head and neck cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, human monoclonal EGFR inhibitors, monoclonal antibody inhibitors of angiogenesis, monoclonal antibody to insulin-like growth factor receptor-1, monoclonal antibody to vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-1, monoclonal antibody against platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha. With all these areas of study and innovations, the single greatest accomplishment that ImClone Systems has is the drug Erbitux (Reuters.com).

On March 1, 2006 the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Erbitux, sometimes also called Cetuximab, for use in combination with radiation therapy for the treatment of locally or regionally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck and as a single agent in recurrent or metastatic where prior platinum-based chemotherapy has failed (Reuters.com). The drug Erbitux has also been discovered to have many other uses that just what it was originally designed for, squandering the rapid growth of tumors. Colorectal cancer is another form of cancer that Erbitux has been seen to have shown potential with. In treating colorectal cancer, adding Erbitux to many different chemotherapy regimens has resulted in faster depletion rates of tumor size and the hindering of the establishment of new tumors found in the same region of the body that the cancer is located in (Reuters.com).

In the head and neck cancer field, a study conducted in cooperation with Merck Incorporated, another biopharmaceutical company that has a respected oncology division, demonstrated that Erbitux, when added to