Mucke Patent number wO/2011/005608 wO/2010/126967 wO/2010/108419 wO/2010/105285 wO/2010/133662 iNSeRM (FR) Assignee and country Merck Sharpe and Dohme (US) Boehringer ingelheim (De); New York University (US) Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CN) Heart Research institute (AU) wO/2010/088455 General Hospital Corp. wO/2010/079161 iNSeRM (FR) wO/2010/077624 Merck Sharpe and Dohme (US) that are commonly applied in academic peer review, even if the claimed improvements might be immediately applicable and useful. In this context, a lack of companion peer review papers does not indicate poor relevance of a patent. A very limited number of investigations have been published that discuss selected aspects of patenting in the context of the vascular risk factors that are the subject of this investigation.9–11 While these are important reviews that illustrate certain aspects, no analysis had been previously undertaken to relate such patenting activity with conjoined peer-review publishing. This pilot study obviously has several limitations. First, since the latest patents included in this analysis were published only three weeks prior to the time of writing, more delayed peer review companion papers might be published as time progresses. However, the two post-patent peer review papers that this analysis did reveal appeared within a few weeks of the corresponding patent. Therefore it seems unlikely that many more true companion papers will be published for the patents listed in Tables 1–3. The delays involved in PubMed indexing of some peer review journals, which can amount to several months, constitute a potentially more severe limitation of this analysis, which covers the most recent 7 months of patenting related to innovation in vascular risk management. Studies that extend over longer periods of patenting and publishing, or compare several periods, could eventually provide more insight. 270 submit your manuscript | www.dovepress.com Dovepress Dovepress Table 2 international patent applications concerning atherosclerosis, July 2010 to January 2011 (excluding antihyperlipidemic, antidiabetic, and nonspecific anti-inflammatory drugs) Subject Cyclohexyl sulfonamide platelet- activating factor (PAF) receptor antagonists interleukin-17 polypeptides for the prevention and treatment of atherosclerosis ex-vivo treatment of blood with protein kinase C-theta inhibitors for immunological diseases and atherosclerosis PON gene cluster to promote stability of atherosclerotic plaques Testing for atherosclerosis or a predisposition thereto, based on monocyte-derived endothelial cells Cromolyn analogs to image and treat atherosclerotic plaques B cell depleting agent for the prevention or treatment of atherosclerosis Biaryl carboxamide PAF receptor antagonists Published January 13, 2011 Companion paper None November 25, 2010 November 4, 2010 Curr Opin Lipidol. 2010;21(5): 404–408 Science. 2010;328(5976): 372–376 September 30, 2010 September 23, 2010 Circ Res. 2009;104(10): 1160–1168 None August 5, 2010 July 15, 2010 July 8, 2010 None None J Exp Med. 2010;207(8): 1579–1578 The data that are available now allow the conclusion that international patent applications can offer valuable insights into new developments concerning vascular risk manage- ment which are not made available in academic peer-review publishing, at least not without a delay of many months which our limited study would not have consistently detected. This implies that systematic monitoring of the patent literature can potentially add a substantial amount of cutting edge information. However, the obvious difficulty of the scientist having to negotiate the legalistic style and repetitive nature of patent jargon remains, as does the difficulty to identify relevant patents. While it has been argued that patent searching must become part of life science students’ information literacy instruction,12 a more pragmatic and encompassing approach could be algorithmically mapping patents to MeSH codes,13 which would allow integrated searches that cover both PubMed and open access patent databases. Although algorithmic parsing of typical “patent jargon” into semantics that are familiar to research scientists is only a dimly perceived possibility at this time,14 text analysis has been able for some years to effectively identify innovative patents and provide ranking and mapping.15 For specialized applica- tions such as the vascular risk management literature, expert systems might provide broadly deployable semi-automated solutions within the next few years. Vascular Health and Risk Management 2011:7