Icos was the largest biotechnology company in the U.S. state of Washington before it was sold to Eli Lilly and Company in 2007. Co-founded in 1989 by George Rathmann, a pioneer in the industry and co-founder of Amgen, Icos focused on the development of drugs to treat inflammatory disorders. During its 17-year history, the company conducted clinical trials of 12 drugs, three of which reached the last phase of clinical trials. Icos is famous for tadalafil (Cialis), a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction. This drug was discovered by GlaxoSmithKline, developed by Icos, and manufactured and marketed in partnership with Eli Lilly. Boosted by a unique advertising campaign led by the Grey Worldwide Agency, sales from Cialis allowed Icos to become profitable in 2006. Cialis was the only drug developed by the company to be approved. LeukArrest, a drug to treat shock, and Pafase, developed for sepsis, were both tested in phase III clinical trials, but testing was discontinued after unpromising results during the trials. Eli Lilly acquired Icos in January 2007, and most of Icos's workers were laid off soon after. CMC Biopharmaceuticals, a Danish contract manufacturer, bought the remnants of Icos and retained the remaining employees. (more...)

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• Mykola Azarov is appointed Prime Minister of Ukraine, formally replacing Yulia Tymoshenko.
• Carlos Slim (pictured) becomes the first non-American to top Forbes? list of billionaires since 1994.
• Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, Grand Imam of al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, dies at the age of 81 during a visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
• An earthquake kills 41 people and injures at least 74 others in Elâz?? Province, Turkey.
• The Hurt Locker wins six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win that award.
• A series of storms passes through Victoria, Australia, producing flash floods and 5-cm (2-in) hail in Greater Melbourne.
• Inter-religious attacks result in hundreds of deaths near Jos, Nigeria.
• Icelanders reject a plan to pay ?3.8 billion to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands as compensation for the collapse of Icesave bank.
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March 13

• 1781 ? German-born British astronomer and composer William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus (pictured) while in the garden of his house in Bath, Somerset, England, thinking it was a comet.
• 1845 ? German composer Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, one of the most popular and most frequently performed violin concertos of all time, was first played in Leipzig, with violinist Ferdinand David as soloist.
• 1943 ? The Holocaust: Nazi troops under SS Hauptsturmführer Amon Göth began liquidating the Jewish Ghetto in Kraków, Poland, sending about 8,000 Jews deemed able to work to the Plaszow labor camp. Those deemed unfit for work were either killed or sent to die at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
• 1954 ? Viet Minh forces under Vo Nguyen Giap unleashed a massive artillery barrage on the French military to begin the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the climactic battle in the First Indochina War.
• 1996 ? In the deadliest attack on children in the history of the United Kingdom, a spree killer killed sixteen children and a teacher at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland, before committing suicide.

More anniversaries: March 12 ? March 13 ? March 14