Pharma Industry Archive

Pfizer and Glaxo confirm layoffs — The rumored cuts at Pfizer, though still unspecified in number, have been confirmed by the company. Pfizer is suspending R&D in several areas, most notably heart disease, its big profit-maker for decades. Meanwhile, GSK is cutting 850 R&D jobs (six percent of its workforce). [Source: In the Pipeline, PharmaGossip] Cephalon ordered to disclose...

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Cephalon agreed yesterday to a $444 million settlement with the Department of Justice that will control its marketing of Actiq, Provigil and Gabitril. (Scroll to the bottom of this page if you want to read the prosecutors’ documents describing the scale of wrongdoing at the company.) The company admitted that it promoted Actiq for various types of pain, under the mantra “Pain is...

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Ever since Eli Lilly launched Prozac in the U.S. in 1987, Americans have had a love affair with anti-depressants. Prozac isn’t just a pill. It was the cultural touchstone of 1990s — as a lifesaver, punchline and punching bag. When Prozac went off-patent in 2001, something interesting happened: the market for new anti-depressants stayed robust instead of being swept away by cheap...

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Shire officially warned for misleading YouTube video — A YouTube video promoting Adderall XR has earned Shire an FDA warning, as statements by Ty Pennington stating that the drug can “change lives” are excessive promises in the federal opinion. YouTube videos are evidently (if not surprisingly) subject to scrutiny as close as that given to traditional ad campaigns. The video...

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Today came the news that Eli Lilly is one of the mystery suitors in the ImClone deal that Bristol-Myers Squibb was just booted from. If CEO John Lechleiter were to scoop up ImClone — thus bolting on the cancer specialist’s pipeline to replace the absence of its own — it would be just the sort of dramatic act that he seems to favor. Either that or he’s flailing around,...

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Who’s buying ImClone? — The hostile takeover drama between ImClone and Bristol-Myers Squibb remains unresolved, leaving more unanswered questions than a soap opera cliffhanger. Why did BMS’s only representative on the Imclone board resign earlier this week? Will Imclone CEO Carl Icahn and BMS head Jim Cornelius spar and insult their way through further press releases? Will the...

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As companies bail out of the inhaled insulin business — most recently Pfizer, which lost $2.8 billion before throwing Exubera overboard — one small firm believes there is an alternative to pills, injections and inhalers. Generex, a Worcester, Mass.-based company, believes there’s an opportunity for insulin delivery in a liquid spray. It isn’t inhaled into the lungs,...

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Merck latest to announce transparency policies — As the Physician Payments Sunshine Act approaches Congressional approval, Merck has announced a plan to publicize the grants they offer medical organizations and speakers. Earlier this week, Lilly made a similar promise, and several other pharma companies have recently retooled their disclosure policies. [Source: Pharmalot] Pfizer embracing...

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Sanofi-Aventis has become the latest drug company to get into the online video game business. This time, it’s for its ubiquitous sleeping pill, Ambien CR. The game is called “Silence Your Rooster.” The game is part of Sanofi’s ad campaign for Ambien, which the Wall Street Journal decided was controversial a couple of weeks ago because it was unbranded. (Although given...

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Medicis stock tumbled roughly 16 percent yesterday after it announced that it would restate six years of its numbers due to an accounting error. But the magnitude of the fall seems to have drawn attention not to the vanity pharma company’s inability to count beans, but the weakness of its key Solodyn acne franchise, and the fact that Allergan, the company’s chief rival, is poised to...

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