Australian students recreate Martin Shkreli price-hike drug in school lab; Guardian, 11/30/16

Melissa Davey, Guardian; Australian students recreate Martin Shkreli price-hike drug in school lab:

"He said the open nature of the project demystified science and revealed the number of roadblocks the students had faced in coming up with the final product, which involved three complicated chemical steps.

“With science results you can be presented with a polished finished product that hides the false steps along the way,” he said. “The students’ real-time diary highlights their whole process, and is a very transparent way of doing things.”...

He said unfortunately the students would not be able to sell their drug to the US market. While the drug can be bought in Australia for about A$13 for a packet of 50, there are a number of complicated legal roadblocks in the way of producing and selling it in the US.

“Turing has the exclusive rights to sell it, even though the drug is no longer under patent,” Todd said. “The ridiculousness of this legal loophole means if we wanted to launch it as drug in the US we’d have to go through a whole new clinical trial because we would have to compare the Sydney Grammar stuff with the officially sanctioned stuff, and Turing would have to give us the drug to allow those comparisons to be made."

Martin Shkreli Sued by Artist Over Wu-Tang Clan Album; Associated Press via New York Times, 2/9/16

Associated Press via New York Times; Martin Shkreli Sued by Artist Over Wu-Tang Clan Album:

"A Long Island artist sued ex-pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli and others Tuesday over the use of his art in a Wu-Tang Clan album, saying he never expected portraits he posted on a fan blog two years ago to be used without his permission.

Artist Jason Koza said in the Manhattan federal court copyright infringement lawsuit that his portraits of members of the New York-based hip-hop group were used without authorization on an album Shkreli bought for $2 million."

Everything You Know About Martin Shkreli Is Wrong—or Is It?; Vanity Fair, 1/31/16

Bethany Mclean, Vanity Fair; Everything You Know About Martin Shkreli Is Wrong—or Is It? :

"I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but I liken myself to the robber barons.” So says Martin Shkreli, the 32-year-old hedge-fund manager turned pharmaceutical-company C.E.O., who achieved instantaneous notoriety last fall when he acquired the U.S. rights to a lifesaving drug and promptly boosted its price over 5,000 percent, from $13.50 a tablet to $750. The tsunami of rage (the BBC asked if Shkreli was “the most hated man in America”) only got worse when Shkreli said he would lower the price—and then didn’t. An anonymous user on the Web site Reddit summed up the sentiment bluntly: “Just fucking die will you?”

“The attempt to public shame is interesting,” says Shkreli. “Because everything we’ve done is legal. [Standard Oil tycoon John D.] Rockefeller made no attempt to apologize as long as what he was doing was legal.” In fact, Shkreli says, he wishes he had raised the price higher. “My investors expect me to maximize profits,” he said in an interview in early December at the Forbes Healthcare Summit, after which Forbes contributor Dan Diamond summed up Shkreli as “fascinating, horrifying, and utterly compelling.”"