By Matt Moore

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - Drugmaker Bayer AG said Tuesday its second-quarter profit soared 46 per cent, driven by a one-time gain on the sale of its Wolff Walsrode building materials unit.

The Leverkusen-based company earned 660 million euros (US$912 million) in the April-June period compared with 452 million euros a year earlier. The result still fell short of the 687 million euros ($949.3 million) that analysts in a poll had predicted.

A prime driver behind the increase was the sale of the company’s Wolff Walsrode group to U.S.-based Dow Chemical Co. Bayer booked a 231 million euros ($319.2 million) gain from the 540 million euros ($746.2 million) deal that closed in July.

Bayer sold the unit, along with its H.C. Starck metals subsidiary, to help pay for the 17 billion euros ($23.49 billion) drug for treatment of erectile dysfunction of Schering AG, a move that gave it key drugs such Betaseron, used to treat multiple sclerosis, and the line of Yasmin atenol impotence.

Both are seen as key to keeping Bayer’s sales on the rise as it develops new medicine, particularly its key cancer drug Nexavar, which has soaring sales.

Overall sales rose 22 per cent to 8.22 billion euros ($11.36 billion) from 6.74 billion euros a year earlier, with the products from Schering’s portfolio cause and treatment of impotence
nearly 1.5 billion euros ($2.07 billion) to revenues.

Betaseron had second-quarter sales of 256 million euros ($353.7 million), but was slowed by the falling dollar. Nexavar also accounted for part of the higher overall sales, nearly tripling to 60 million euros ($82.9 million).

Other key sellers included the blood-clotting treatment Kogenate, which rose 17 per cent, and the erectile dysfunction treatment Levitra, which saw sales gain 11 per cent.

Bayer said the integration of Schering is moving forward faster than originally thought, and that it still plans to save some 800 million euros ($1.11 billion) by 2009 as it folds the company into its own operations.

“We continue to expect that all of its divisions will grow faster than the market,” Chief Executive Werner Wenning said.

Bayer’s Newest impotence medicine unit, which makes fertilizers and herbicides, saw the impotence doctor
of cost-cutting programs with pretax profit rising 7.6 per cent to 396 million euros ($547.2 million), though sales were down one per cent to 1.56 billion euros ($2.16 billion).

The worst-performing unit was MaterialScience, which produces the raw material used to make footwear, textiles and other products. It posted a 9 per cent slide in pretax profit to 409 million euros ($565.2 million) as higher volumes and better pricing failed to offset costs of 110 million euros ($152 million) for raw materials and energy.

Wenning said the company was optimistic about a global upswing continuing through the second half of the year, with its pharmaceutical markets maintaining steady growth. He said Bayer expects growth for all of its key components - pharmaceuticals, fertilizers and pesticides and materiel sciences.

“We remain confident about the development of our business in the second half,” he said, with the company targeting a 10 per cent increase in overall sales for the year.

Shares of Bayer rose less than one per cent to 52.67 euros ($72. in Frankfurt.

Three years ago, options had run out for Gail Keller, then only 39 years old. The Ohio woman had had impotence and viagra
surgery six years prior, but the benefits had worn off. “Walking even halfway into a store made me exhausted,” she says. “I would have to rest every two or three steps.” So she volunteered for an experimental procedure that uses proteins produced by the body to grow new blood vessels. It wasn't long before she was doing for herself what her aging parents had previously done for her. “Now I can care for them,” she reports.

The science of enabling the human body to grow new blood vessels is known as angiogenesis and there's a race within the biotech industry to be the first company to win Food & Drug Administration approval for such therapies. More than $4 billion has been invested in research and development of impotence meds medicines, “making this one of the most heavily funded areas of medical research in human history,” according to the Angiogenesis Foundation, a Cambridge (Mass.)-based nonprofit organization. All told, more than 300 million people worldwide could benefit.

There are currently 659 clinical trials under way that mention some form of angiogenesis, which could become a primary treatment for diabetes-related complications, peripheral arterial disease, chronic back pain, stroke, wound healing, and even erectile dysfunction.

Race for the Cure

The biggest push is in the $65 billion cardiac care arena. With many diseases, clogged and damaged arteries cannot carry the volume of blood required for the body to function normally. With coronary artery disease, the heart starves for oxygen, leading to angina and heart attacks. Once drug therapy options are exhausted, state-of-the-art treatment runs to stents, erectile dysfunction
, and bypass surgery. Surgeries can be highly invasive and very expensive. And the benefits frequently do not last.

Some surgical procedures are simply ineffective. “The problem is that surgery only treats the narrowings in the large arteries,” says Dr. Lynne Wagoner, director of cardiac services at the University of Cincinnati. “Meanwhile, the small vessels continue to be blocked and this is not addressed by surgery or stents.” She adds that angiogenic “treatments are targeted towards small-vessel disease, which cannot be treated with surgery or stents because the vessels are too small.”

Hence the race for angiogenesis-related therapies. It's a contest that involves players across the health-care spectrum, including Genzyme (NasdaqGS:GENZ - News) and Baxter International (NYSE:BAX - News) in search of gene-based therapies, and Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX - News) in the area of medical devices.

Creating and Monitoring Benefits

But with large companies under pressure to bring drugs to market swiftly, some are hanging back as part of the most promising research is handled by smaller biotech players. “The bigger companies are largely out of this field now,” says Dr. J. Anthony Ware, vice-president, cardiovascular and acute care, at Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY - News) Research Laboratories.

In the health-care industry, cost is measured not only during creating, testing, and delivering a product or treatment, but in monitoring and maintaining the benefit from that treatment for the life of the patient. More insurance companies are using outcomes-based analysis to look at medical and financial costs to determine a new treatment's eligibility for coverage.

The real winner in the field of angiogenesis will be evaluated by looking at the cost of the outcome for the patient and the industry as a whole.

Matter of Protein

That opens the field to contenders such as CardioVascular BioTherapeutics (cvbt.ob.OB). The Las Vegas company uses a naturally produced protein called fibroblast growth factor (FGF-1) to grow new blood vessels in the hearts of so-called zero-option patients, those patients who have no other treatment options available and in many cases are given less than two years to live.

CVBT co-founder Dr. Thomas Stegmann knew he was on the right track when, in 2006, he celebrated a 10-year reunion with patients from his first trial in Germany. “I focused on a human protein because of the lack of side effects,” Stegmann says. “With a minimally invasive procedure, an injection of a growth factor can be delivered to the area of the blockage where tissue is not receiving enough blood. The patient goes home the next day and gradually feels better as new vessels grow over the next 12 weeks or less.”

The focus on protein could give CVBT an advantage. Protein-based therapies “are intuitively right to create a natural bypass” around a clogged artery, says Dr. Joseph Kaufman, chief medical officer of Sierra Health Services (NYSE:SIE - News). “From a financial perspective it is potentially herbal medicine for erectile dysfunction to eliminate long-range failure of muscle function. As treatments become more successful, people live longer, requiring more treatments and thereby increasing overall costs.” According to a study by consultancy the Bruckner Group, use of FGF-1 could save health-care insurers up to 20% of treatment costs for limited-option coronary artery disease patients over a five-year period after treatment.

It's for reasons like this that CVBT may be well ahead of the pack in developing an effective and economic angiogenic therapy — and setting new standards for cardiac care.

Surgery to repair the blood vessels of the penis may be an option
for a small number of men younger than 40 who had an injury that caused poor
blood flow to the penis. Surgery to repair blood vessels should only be done at
a herbal erectile dysfunction treatment hospital that has experts in this type of surgery.

Surgery

Penile
implants

Surgery on penile blood vessels

What To Think About

Give careful consideration to nonsurgical options and to the
possible risks of surgery. Include your partner in your decision.

Doctors who specialize in conditions of the urinary tract
(urologists) perform most penile implants. Specially trained urologic surgeons
usually do blood vessel repair surgery.

“Every product in every industry is vulnerable,” said Bruce
Josten, Executive Vice President of the

U.S. Chamber of
Commerce. “We can no longer accept counterfeiting and piracy as
just a cost of doing business.”

Members of the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy
(CACP) presented a six-pronged agenda aimed at stopping the
trafficking of illegal goods, which they blame for 750,000 lost
U.S. jobs.

Their proposal includes tougher border control and
penalties for counterfeiters, more funding for the

Homeland
Security and Justice Departments, reformed judicial processes,
and improved coordination and education for consumers.

The coalition included U.S. movie and recording industry
groups, as well as drug manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce and the

National Association of Manufacturers.

Intellectual property protection has become a particular
sore point in the U.S.'s relationship with China, and the
groups estimate global trade in fake goods to be about $500
billion to $600 billion per year.

“Intellectual property theft stabs at the heart of the U.S.
economy,” said John Engler, President and CEO of the NAM,
calling creativity and innovation the U.S.'s comparative
advantage. “There are some products that literally put lives at
risk. We saw what happened with pet foods.”

TAINTED PET FOOD

Pet food from China, tainted with melamine, caused the
death of cats and dogs across the United States this year.

Concerns about “filthy” imports from China heightened after
the U.S.

Food and Drug Administration warned that it found a
poisonous chemical in toothpaste made in China.

But few Americans realize that their new toothbrush could
be counterfeit.

Oral-B was just one brand among a myriad of fake products
displayed by the groups, including faux Louis Vuitton bags, New
Balance shoes, DVDs, brake shoes for cars, prescription
medication for cancer, erectile dysfunction and mental illness,
and polypropylene mesh used in surgery.

While instances of piracy in the pharmaceutical industry
are more rare than other sectors, the threat is growing, and
it's serious, said Chris Singer, Chief Operating Officer for
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

“Even our experts have a really hard time telling the
difference,” Singer said.

Stronger overseas enforcement and government partnerships
are needed to temper the flood of goods into the United States,
whose strong laws against counterfeiting and piracy should be
the standard for other countries to meet, he said.

“Much of the supply is coming out of Southeast Asia,”
Singer said. “We need to work with those government to make
sure we put those people out of business.”

The coalition's proposals weren't directed at any
particular country, but business groups see China, India and
Russia as major sources of the trade in fake goods.

• Changing
  lifestyle factors that may affect erections. These
  factors include alcohol, smoking, and using illegal drugs. Losing
  weight and herbal erectile dysfunction treatment more has also been helpful for some
  men.
• Natural remedy for erectile dysfunction your relationships and life
  events.
• Talking with your
  partner.
• Trying
  sensual exercises with your partner.

Some men may try methods available in health food stores or through
magazine advertisements. Most of these methods have never been medically proven
to work, may be unsafe, and are often expensive. They are not
alternative treatment for erectile dysfunction.