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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Icos/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by SandyGeorgia 14:12, 8 September 2009 [1].

Icos

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Nominator(s): Shubinator (talk) 19:49, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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I am nominating this for featured article because it is a comprehensive overview of the company. The article has been through peer review and GA, and I believe it's now up to featured article quality. Shubinator (talk) 19:49, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 22:45, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Replaced with the USPTO document it's referring to. (Hopefully the link will last.) Shubinator (talk) 23:01, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments – requested by the nominator on my Talk Page. This is an interesting article, which is generally well written, but I don't think it is quite ready to be promoted. The first paragraph of the Lead focusses on Cialis, rather than Icos, and the second paragraph is mainly a blue list of medical conditions, which is not at all engaging—quite the opposite in fact. There are glitches in the prose. This sentence, for example, lacks logical flow, "The name Icos comes from a shortening of the word icosahedron, a 20-sided polyhedron, as many viruses have this shape." Changing "as" to "and" would help a little, but many readers will be left wondering about the relevance of the viruses here. Later we read, "Originally, the company's plan was to research such viruses involved in inflammation, but they were never studied." Why "such viruses", and indeed which viruses, an example would help. I also saw "Gates. Gates" and many lazy uses of "ads" instead of "advertisements". I was not happy with this sentence "The drug is a monoclonal antibody that suppresses white blood cells which become overly active during shock." Suppresses what? their production in the bone marrow, antibody or chemokine production by them, phagocytosis, white blood cells have a multitude of functions. And this sentence is wrong, "It inhibits a compound that plays a role in the inflammation seen in sepsis." It does not, it inactivates a protein, which is not the same thing—this is correctly given in the source. Here's another example of lazy writing, "In addition to the termination of Icos employees, other aspects of the acquisition were similarly legal." How were they terminated? I saw these problems during my first reading of the article, and I suspect more would be revealed by a closer scrutiny. In summary, I think the article lacks focus and the prose would benefit from a fresh pair of eyes. Graham Colm Talk 12:04, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
PS. I hope the nominator does not take my use of the word "lazy" personally; clearly, a lot of hard work and dedication has been gone into this contribution—I am only describing the writing-style as I read it. I have made a few suggestions [2] (not all mine), but sadly, I feel too much work remains to be done that can be achieved in a reasonable time here at FAC. I think that this FAC could be very protracted and humbly suggest a withdrawal, which would allow for a fresh start later. Graham Colm Talk 22:34, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think I've addressed your specific concerns (with your help). It was suggested at the GA review that the lead should focus more on Cialis, which is why Cialis was highlighted in the first paragraph. I have changed it back to the format it was before, but this may be down to editor preference. I fixed the "Gates. Gates" and changed all "ads" to "advertisements" (though the sources themselves use "ads" in their newspaper titles). Also added a sentence on LeukArrest inhibiting white blood cell movement to the brain, changed "inhibits a compound" to "inactivates a protein", and changed "termination" to "layoff". I don't take it personally; I know it becomes harder to spot errors the longer you work on a piece. As I've said below, I'll leave this open a little while longer since FAC is one of the best ways to get fresh eyes. Shubinator (talk) 23:21, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The cialis section is ungainly - see the 'Tadalafil' at the stat of each para. I am sorry that I didn't offer more at Peer Review. My impression is either pushing on for a (possibly very messy) FAC, or drop it and work on it before renominating. I will chip in either way but have a lot on my plate at the moment. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:02, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The section was rearranged to avoid starting each paragraph with "Tadalafil" (thanks Graham). Any help/suggestions are appreciated. (see below for my comment on withdrawing) Shubinator (talk) 23:21, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I realize this may have a small chance of passing now, but I would like to leave the FAC open for at least a few more days to get suggestions for improvement (especially in the science). The article was looked over by a few others (Looie496, Mattisse, Enigmaman) before, but I'll try to find another copyeditor. Shubinator (talk) 22:51, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I will try to have a look later again, today (Sunday) is looking pretty busy. Leaving it open for a bit is fine, all going in the same direction :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:56, 30 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments (no particular section, or order:

  • Is the footnote necessary in the sentence The company focused on developing drugs to treat inflammatory disorders in the lede? If this is repeated elsewhere, or if it's clear throughout the article anyway, then it might not be necessary to have the footnote in the lede.
  • Icos conducted clinical trials of a dozen compounds, three of which reached the last phase of testing : The article has sections on three 'other drugs', plus Cialis, so I want to check to see if I'm understanding it right... is Cialis not included in the total there because GlaxoSmithKline, not Icos, did the clinical trials? (And if that is the case, what does it mean to say that Icos "developed" the drug?) And, while we're on that, what does "reached their last phase of testing" mean? I'm not familiar with pharmaceutical stuff, so I'm not sure if this is an important milestone in drug development or anything...does it mean they were never released on the market but they were still 'official' anyway?
  • In a lower section, As a result, Cialis advertisements were also the first to describe the side effects in an advertisement, as the FDA requires advertisements with specifics to mention side effects : I don't quite see the cause-effect relationship here, or why the aside about the FDA requirement is necessary. Is it that FDA didn't have this requirement before, and then they introduced it, and Cialis was the first drug to be marketed under the new requirements? If that is the case, it could probably be made more explicit.
    • The regulations require disclosure of side effects if you essentially say "Buy our product!" The other ED drugs described ED, and said "see your doctor for more", so they didn't describe side effects. I've added a bit to clarify this. Shubinator (talk) 04:36, 30 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Who was Paul Clark (before becoming CEO and chairman)? His name seems to pop up rather suddenly.
  • For Cialis, why are sales figures listed for 2006 and no other years—ie, what is significant about 2006? It seems like it might be that 2006 was the first year Icos ever made a profit, but I had to search around for that a little bit. Also, this raises two other questions: 1) when was Cialis first put on the market?; 2) if Cialis didn't go on the market until 2006 and/or Icos never made a profit until then, what were they doing for their first 16 years???
    • Oops, I just found the answer to the first question, down in the next paragraph. But I think the section could be reorganized a bit... either the Cialis timeline should be mentioned earlier, or the sales stuff mentioned later. I was confused to see sales figures being mentioned before I had read when the drug hit the market, etc. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 04:28, 30 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • 2006 is special because it's the only year I have third-party data for :) A few other drugs were being developed during that time (see lower down in the article). Drug development takes a while. I rearranged the first part in the Cialis section to be more chronological. Shubinator (talk) 05:19, 30 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • It has also been approved for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in the United States, and marketed as Adcirca.[10] : This sentence is more or less repeated at the bottom of that section, and probably doesn't need to be. I imagine you were trying to use the first paragraph of the section as sort of a mini-lede, but the section is short enough already that I don't think that's necessary; I would probably just hold off on mentioning Adcirca until the bottom of the section, (the paragraph beginning "In May 2009..."). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 04:31, 30 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Issues in the "lawsuits" section:
    • Pfizer and Lilly Icos have contested many lawsuits : slightly awkward wording, at first it made me think they together had to face lots of lawsuits from outside (class action suits or whatever), and it wasn't until later that I realized it meant they had lots of lawsuits against one another.
    • In the United States, Pfizer filed suit against Lilly Icos soon after receiving a broad patent for PDE5 inhibitors in October 2002. : I had to re-read this because at first I was like "wait, but I thought they didn't get a patent?" After looking more closely, I guess the understanding I'm supposed to get is: 1) Pfizer gets British patent 2) Lawsuit in British court 3) Pfizer gets US patent 4) Lawsuit in US court. Anyway, I understand that it would be quite awkward to write "Pfizer filed suit in the United States... after receiving a broad patent in the United States...". But I do think it's necessary to do something to make it clearer that we're talking about two different patents.
    • Pfizer moved to block sales of Cialis, arguing that there could be consumer backlash against Pfizer should Cialis be pulled from the market as a result of an ongoing patent lawsuit. : This sentence stumped me for a bit, I think because I don't understand the difference between "blocking sales" and "pulling from the market". Do you mean that Cialis had not yet gone on the market at all, and Pfizer wanted to keep it off the market altogether so it wouldn't be pulled back out of the market later? If that is the case, adding a date or a little mention of where this was with regards to the Cialis timeline would be helpful.
      • Yes, Pfizer's saying the drug shouldn't be sold now, because it may be pulled from the market later. I changed that part to "Pfizer moved to block sales of Cialis five months after it was approved there". Shubinator (talk) 05:59, 30 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • In general, the section sounds a bit anti-Pfizer. I don't know much about all this, so for all I know maybe they really were being jerks... but if there is anything that could be done to balance it or present their side of the story, that might be helpful.
      • I looked over all the lawsuit section sources, and there aren't any comments from Pfizer, or analysts giving a more balanced picture. There's just more like "Pfizer has mounted a worldwide patent challenge against Cialis and Levitra". Shubinator (talk) 05:59, 30 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the Marketing section, Cialis has sponsored many sports events, such as the America's Cup and the PGA Tour, and was title sponsor of the PGA Tour Western Open tournament.[1] might not be necessary. It doesn't seem like a huge deal, given that lots of drugs sponsor lots of events, and this one is already notable enough that it doesn't need to struggle for WP-notability with refs like this. But, since I don't know much about pharmaceutical stuff, maybe this is a bigger deal than I realize.
  • I'm still not quite sure what advertisements directly targeting consumers refers to, even after reading the source (which just confused me more). In the source, it says that Viagra commercials went from being Viagra-pushing to just saying "talk to your doctor about ED"; from your comments, it sounds like Cialis did the opposite (marketing Cialis specifically). But both are described as being "aimed directly at consumers"...
    • I removed this sentence too; it's not really related. Before 1997, none of the ED ads would have been allowed. The idea was that only doctors should be telling you what medicine to take. Shubinator (talk) 06:17, 30 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • For the long list of conditions at the beginning of the "Other drugs" section, is there a source? Or is this just a compilation of sourced things from below?
  • What do you mean by "the gene for Pafase"? The gene that the drug manipulates/effects?
  • For Pafase, a couple sentences say early trials showed a reduction in 28-day death rate, but then next it says a later trial showed that it didn't increase "chance of survival"...why the discrepancy? Did the later trial have different methodology, or more subjects, or something like that? Or was it measuring "chance of survival" using a different standard?
    • The source [3] doesn't specify any differences. They were at different stages of clinical trials though, and as trials progress more subjects are used and in general they become more rigorous. Shubinator (talk) 06:42, 30 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Eos would have non-exclusive rights to Icos's CHEF1 enhanced mammalian protein expression technology. : this is the first (and I think only) time this technology is mentioned in the article. Is there any other technology stuff, other than drug development/trials, that Icos did that is not described in the article?
  • Eli Lilly increased its offer to $34 per share, a 6 percent increase : how much does this increase work out to in the total amount? (I suppose I could do the math to find out, but I bet most readers won't want to :) )
  • Is the long list of all the managers' severance packages necessary, or could it just be replaced by a brief mention?
  • Last thing: is this about all there is to say on Icos, or is there anything more? Specifically, I'm thinking, could you go through the Pfizer and Eli Lilly and Company articles (and any other relevant ones in Category:Pharmaceutical companies), looking at their structures/TOCs, and see if there are any analogues for Icos? Since Icos was shorter-lived and smaller than those companies, I don't expect this article to be as long or have as many sections, but I figured we should at least check to see if there are any holes left.
    • I glanced at those, as well as Bayer and Merck & Co., and the one piece that might apply is environmental stuff. However, I've scoured all the newspapers that mentioned Icos before, and they don't mention anything environmental. Some stuff like Corporate Architecture only makes sense for large companies, and the Awards sections seem tangential (and the newspapers didn't mention Icos getting any award worth mentioning). I think I've used the meat (of reliable refs) to the bone. Shubinator (talk) 06:59, 30 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 04:04, 30 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Last comment: I'm still concerned about the inclusion of the long list of names; to me it seems almost petty (no offense intended to you, it was there before you even touched the article). If it were up to me, I would just say "X high-level employees of Icos got severance packages of over $1.5 million" or something along those lines. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 00:42, 2 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support An informative and well-researched article, and it seems to say as much as there is to say on this topic—I see no big holes. I notice there has been some more copyediting in the past day or so, but IMO it all looks pretty minor, so I'm not worried about it. As for concerns about this article's overlap with Tadalafil, I'm satisfied that it's handled well: that article has more information on scientific details and stuff that aren't in this article, while this article focuses more on business-y things and, in general, stuff that Icos did with the drug (so it's more about Icos' handling of the drug than about the drug itself); also, I'm not bothered by the fact that this article focuses mostly on that drug, since it does seem to be Icos' main claim to fame. Another image or two (for example, of the former Icos headquarters, or some of their other drugs, or its founders and people like that) would be nice, but I don't think the article is suffering for lack of images. All in all, I think this is a fine article and meets all the FA criteria. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 19:14, 2 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yeah, I'm trying to get more pictures. A former employee emailed me a beautiful picture of the headquarters during sunset, but it turned out Eli Lilly owned the copyright, and their legal department wouldn't budge. (Also, it immediately fails NFCC #4 since I don't think it's previously been published, so no fair use.) Shubinator (talk) 04:10, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. A comprehensive and commendably well-written piece of work. I worked a bit on the prose where it was still somewhat clumsy (particularly the Cialis section and subsections), and am convinced that the rest of the article meets criterion 1(a). A couple of nitpicks:
    • I like to link the different phases of clinical trials (II/III etc.) to their respective sections in the clinical trial article. Just a suggestion, though.
    • In "LeukArrest": LeukArrest was also tested for treatment of heart attack, multiple sclerosis, and stroke. Unsuccessfully, I presume?
    • In the Pafase section: the enzyme was discovered in the mid-1980s by graduate student Diana Stafforini, Steve Prescott, Guy Zimmerman, and Tom McIntyre. Was Ms. Stafforini the only graduate student in the group? Are there any institutional affiliations worth mentioning, e.g. were they all from academia or was somebody an Icos employee? Also, The gene for Pafase would be clearer as The gene that codes for Pafase or The gene that encodes Pafase.
    • I've changed all instances of sitaxsentan to sitaxentan (the new International Nonproprietary Name). You may want to note that sitaxentan development was successful—it is already available in Europe if memory serves.
    • I've also made some changes for accuracy, in response to your wishes at Maralia's talk page.
  • That's it. I agree with Rjanag that this is a very well-researched article—congratulations—and I believe it meets all of the FA criteria. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 20:01, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Phases linked.
  • Added "unsuccessfully". I think all the clinical trials were stopped once the phase III one was stopped.
  • Yes, she was the only graduate student, and the group's from the University of Utah (clarified/added in the article). I don't think any went on to become Icos employees; the Salt Lake Tribune article from 2000 suggests they're all still at the University of Utah. Changed to "The gene that codes for Pafase", much better than my version.
  • Added a sentence that on its approval in Europe, Australia, and Canada.
  • Thank you for looking into the scientific side of things (and Graham as well); specialty editors in general are hard to find. Shubinator (talk) 03:57, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 01:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Shubinator (talk) 02:30, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
  1. ^ Loyd, Linda (July 6, 2003). "Two Pills Look to Topple Viagra's Reign in Market; Levitra Expects Approval Next Month, Cialis Later This Year". The Philadelphia Inquirer. p. E01.
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