BNET Industries
Pharma Industry
Industry news and insights by David Hamilton
- Get Pharma Industry via:
- Mobile
- RSS Feed
- Email Alerts
FDA Loosens Rules for Overseas Drug Trials
The FDA has abandoned a requirement that international drug trials must conform to the Helsinki Declaration, which requires new drugs to be tested against existing therapies, not a placebo.... Continued »
BNET Pharma Insights
The Week That Was in Pharma
Welcome back from the weekend. Here’s a quick roundup of stories you may have overlooked over the past week:
Merck said it would cut 1,200 jobs following the FDA’s rejection of one cholesterol drug and a scandal that’s cuts sales of its combination drug Vytorin, which it sells with Schering-Plough. That’s on top of 8,100 jobs […]
...Pharma Articles
-
Sanofi Hit By Generic Plavix Threat in Europe
By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) - French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis (SASY), which briefly encountered generic competition to its second-biggest product Plavix in the United States in 2006 and 2007, now faces a similar threat in Europe. Schweizerhall (SWHN), a Swiss generic drug company, said...
-
Takeda Sees Big Profit Slump on Millennium Costs
By Edwina Gibbs TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd posted a 77 percent drop in quarterly operating profit as it spent to boost its pipeline, and forecast a sharp fall in annual income linked to the costs of its $8...
-
Takeda Sees Big Profit Slump on Millennium Costs
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd posted a 7.7 percent fall in annual operating profit on Friday and forecast a sharp drop for the current year on costs for its $8.8 billion purchase of U.S. biotech firm Millennium...
-
Drugmakers Need to Rein in Ads, Hearing Told
By Susan Heavey WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pharmaceutical companies need to be more responsible in touting products to consumers or else face tighter controls from Congress, a top U.S. Democratic lawmaker said on Thursday. Rep. Bart Stupak, at a hearing to discuss specific ads...
-
Schering-Plough Now in the Feds' Crosshairs
The Vytorin scandal just got serious. Well, heck, it was already serious. Make this really serious: Investigation and Inquiries.  Through the date of filing this 10-Q, Schering-Plough, the joint venture and/or its ...
-
Glaxo Bond Boosts Chances of Euro Mega Deals
By Natalie Harrison LONDON (Reuters UK) - GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) well-received $9 billion (4.6 billion pound) bond this week, the largest dollar issue by a non-U.S. corporate in seven years, has raised confidence of possible euro mega deals in the next few months. The success of the...
-
Medtronic to Cut About 1,100 Jobs
By Susan Kelly CHICAGO (Reuters) - Medtronic Inc (MDT) on Tuesday said it would eliminate about 1,100 jobs this year, or almost 3 percent of its work force, in businesses whose growth has slowed, including its flagship heart rhythm device unit. The company...
-
Emergent's Vaccine Play: Biotech Can Flip-Flop, Too
For sudden twists of fate, abrupt collapses and the occasional stunning revival, it's hard to beat the biotech industry. Yesterday, for instance, the all-but-dead biotech VaxGen agreed to sell off its ailing anthrax vaccine to its East Coast rival Emergent BioSolutions --a company that spent much of this decade trying...
-
Pfizer Drops Glaucoma Drug, NicOx Shares Slump
PARIS (Reuters) - Pfizer (PFE) has decided not to take NicOx's (NCOX) experimental glaucoma drug PF-03187207 into final Phase III tests after a mid-stage study failed to met its primary endpoint, sending NicOx shares tumbling. The news is a major blow for NicOx,...
-
Man Bites Dog: Former Merck CEO Blasts High Drug Prices
Most pharmaceutical companies insist that high drug prices are a natural consequence of the risky business of drug discovery, and that huge profits on marketed drugs are necessary to cover the costs of the 5,000 to 10,000 experimental drugs that fail for every one that succeeds. In fact, there are...
-
European Stocks Pause After Rally
By Blaise Robinson PARIS (Reuters UK) - European stocks dipped in early trade on Monday, as comments by U.S. influential investor Warren Buffett that said the U.S. economy was in recession prompted investors to take a breather after last week's lofty gains. Trading volumes remained low...
-
Government Seen Risking Business Exodus Over Tax
LONDON (Reuters UK) - Some of the biggest names in British business have told the government that it risks a corporate exodus if it presses ahead with tax proposals on foreign earnings, newspapers said on Sunday. The Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph said a delegation ...
-
P&G Sues J&J Over Tooth-whitening Strip Patent
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Co (PG) said on Friday it sued Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), claiming that J&J's Listerine Whitening Quick Dissolving Strips violate P&G patents. The lawsuit, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the...
-
Pfizer Reaches Deal With Some Celebrex Users: Report
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc (PFE) has reached tentative deals with some patients who claim to have suffered heart attacks and strokes from taking the company's Celebrex and Bextra pain medicines, the Wall Street Journal said on Friday, citing plaintiff...
-
Pfizer Invests $300 Mln in Irish Biotech Facility
LONDON (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc (PFE), the world's biggest drugmaker, is to invest 190 million euros ($297 million) establishing a new biotech plant in Ireland for the production of experimental medicines, it said on Friday. The facility, which will create around 100 permanent...
-
Merck Extends Deadline For Vioxx Settlement
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Merck & Co (MRK) said on Thursday at least 94 percent of eligible U.S. claimants have elected to participate in its $4.85 billion proposed Vioxx settlement, and the drugmaker extended the deadline for the remainder to join ...
-
Esperion Escapes the Pfizer Borg
Esperion Therapeutics, a biotech that Pfizer spent $1.3 billion acquiring in 2003, is free once more. And its founder, Roger Newton, is apparently putting the band back together. Newton, in fact, has just pulled off one of the rarer and most complicated moves in biotechnology -- the...
-
Drugmakers Win Appeal Over Alzheimer Curbs
By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters UK) - An appeals court on Thursday ruled the country's healthcare cost-effectiveness watchdog had acted unfairly in the way it decided to curb access to Alzheimer's drugs, in a victory for drugmakers and patients. The move will let manufacturers renew their...
-
Glaxo Wins U.S. FDA Approval For Wider Advair Use
By Susan Heavey WASHINGTON (Reuters UK) - U.S. health regulators have said GlaxoSmithKline Plc's (GSK)(GSK) Advair is safe and effective to more widely treat patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the drugmaker said on Wednesday. Glaxo's approval comes the same day as rival AstraZeneca...
-
Glaxo Wins FDA Approval For Wider Advair Use
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health regulators have said GlaxoSmithKline Plc's (GSK)(GSK) Advair is safe and effective to more widely treat patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the drugmaker said on Wednesday. Glaxo's approval comes the same day as rival AstraZeneca...
- More recent Pharma Articles »
- « Earlier Pharma Articles
Top Companies
- Johnson & Johnson $190.6B
- Pfizer Inc. $136.7B
- Merck & Co. Inc. $89.7B
- Abbott Laboratories Inc. $79.7B
- Genentech Inc. $77.0B
- McKesson Corp. $92.9B
- Cardinal Health Inc. $86.8B
- AmerisourceBergen Corp. $66.0B
- Johnson & Johnson $61.0B
- Pfizer Inc. $48.4B
- Johnson & Johnson $10.5B
- Pfizer Inc. $8.1B
- Wyeth $4.6B
- Abbott Laboratories Inc. $3.6B
- Merck & Co. Inc. $3.2B
Top Rated
- Takeda's Spree Peaks With Millennium Buy+3 votes
- More Internet Marketing Looms in Pharma's Future+2 votes
- Glaxo Gets an FDA Warning... With Teeth+1 vote
- Merck, Schering Unable to Stop Digging in Vytorin Mess+1 vote
- Lilly Concocts Something New for Diabetics to Worry About: "Finger Health"+1 vote
- Big Pharma Bringing Out the Spies+1 vote
- Pharma Is Whacking R&D, Too -- Or Is It?+1 vote
- Marketing Trumps Science in Vytorin Scandal+1 vote
BNET Industry Analyst Profiles
David P. Hamilton
David P. Hamilton, a 14-year veteran of the Wall Street Journal, is a freelance business and medical writer in San Francisco. He most recently founded the LifeScience section of VentureBeat, a news site for innovation and venture business. Previously, David covered biotechnology, the Internet, and computing and served as a Tokyo foreign correspondent for the Journal. He is a two-time winner of the Overseas Press Club award and spent several years as a reporter at... more »
Recommended Sources
BNET Industries Blogroll
Archives
AboutPharma Industry
BNET Pharma provides daily industry news coverage and insights for managers and executives about the major manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and medicine. In addition to detailed company profiles, we bring you critical analysis on new alliances and partnerships, new patents and products, mergers and acquisitions, cost management, investments and deal flow, and a host of other important business issues.