I for one, have wondered what "caused" the 2-day volume surge to 36M shares a day in March 2014 with no "news" and no 13D/G filings. I also thought that PPHM might have just been jumping on the exosome bandwagon. But I found an early paper on the procedure (sorry Bio/cj, I don't remember if you guys found/posted this or not).
and when you click for more information on the authors you find out it was submitted in 18 Nov 2013, Updated 02 MARCH 2014 (Volume greatly picked up in Jan 2014 with 2-day surge on 6-7 march) and accepted on 04 April 2014. But note that this procedure is very unique because it isolates tumor exosomes as opposed other methods that isolate/concentrate all exosomes in a sample.
Then while the patent was published 15 Dec 2016 (and we know what happened to volume/price, and who since then), the initial provisional patent was filed 09 Jun 2015.