Pharma Industry Archive

Reading the mainstream press over the last few weeks could give you the strong impression that pharma has entered a phase of deal-making frenzy. Here’s how Reuters describes it today: Big pharmaceutical companies are set to step up the hunt for assets to buy in promising fields like biotechnology, as well as non-prescription areas of healthcare. …  competition is fierce. Certainly,...

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Paris-based pharma giant Sanofi-Aventis may be about to get a little less French with the appointment of Chris Viehbacher, formerly head of U.S. pharma at GlaxoSmithKline, as its new CEO. The company gets more than half of its revenues on its top drugs from the U.S. (as you can see on page 39 of Sanofi’s half-year report) and yet it sometimes behaves as if the American market were an...

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The chatter in Europe today is the rumor that Pfizer may be interested in acquiring Bayer. Bayer’s stock is trading up on the news. It’s an interesting prospect. Pfizer’s stock is in the dumpster and won’t start looking up until its pipeline starts to revive after 2011. The constant drumbeat behind CEO Jeff Kindler’s leadership has been that he’s got to do...

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Imagine your drug company has the following problems: A portfolio of expensive, discretionary cosmetic products that Medicare and Medicaid won’t reimburse for; it’s under investigation by the Department of Justice for alleged off-label promotion; the recession is crimping consumers’ desire to spend money on non-essential drug products; and the marketplace is only becoming more...

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A reader wrote to me to complain that Pfizer was not a pioneer of drug-based video games, as I asserted its “Viva Cruiser” effort was for Viagra. She said: There was a game that Novo Nordisk put out about 15 years ago to promote their insulin called Captain Novolin. It was on the SuperNES platform and featured a diabetic superhero who fought off evil sugary treats. It also featured...

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The M&A chess match going on between Sanofi-Aventis and Zentiva, a Czech Republic-based generic drug maker, is fascinating because it seems that the tiny Czech company is the one in a position of strength. Sanofi’s bid was rejected by Zentiva on Wednesday. At first glance, it appears that Sanofi has everything going in its favor: The global French giant has nearly $30 billion in...

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One of the recent unheralded successes of the drug world was Shire Pharmaceuticals‘ launch of Vyvanse, a new, long-acting treatment for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. The fact that so little attention has been paid to Vyvanse is a shame because the take-up of this drug has been impressive — it appears to be well on its way to supplanting Adderall XR as the king of the...

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First it was a pill. Then it was a cultural phenomenon. Now Viagra is a video game. Pfizer is currently advertising its blockbuster erectile dysfunction drug with an online game called “Viva Cruiser.” In doing so, the company seems to be courting controversy — as it has done in the past — over whether it believes Viagra is a legitimate treatment for a medical condition...

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Negative public opinion just keeps piling on to Genentech regarding its pricing policy on Lucentis and Avastin. This weekend saw a big Associated Press story describe how the company is refusing to ask the FDA to approve Avastin for use in treating “wet age-related macular degeneration,” an eye condition that leads to blindness. Genentech is doing this, most people believe, because...

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