It patents the use of the compound to treat a particular disorder, the process used to make the drug and anything else it can think of.

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Whereas biologists tend to see biotech as the search for a compound, Mr Levin thinks of it as a complex production process.

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Dr Blumberg believes the compound interferes with the body's normal fat-formation process, and puts its fat-storage mechanism on overdrive, plumping up the person.

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He suggested that, even at relatively low concentrations, the compound might possess a "unique capacity" to induce genes which start the bone-building process.

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The patent on the fluoxetine hydrochloride, the compound formerly known only as Prozac, runs out next year, and the patent on the process used to make it runs out in 2003.

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