Pharma Industry Archive

A New Year will bring a new president, a new FDA chief, many new drug regulations, and, possibly, health insurance reform. Mindful of the ton of major drug brands that will go off-patent in 2009, drug companies have not rested in their lobbying efforts over generics and patent issues. They continue to spend millions urging government to do things in their favor. In fact President Obama is...

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Pfizer has laid off 14,000 people over the last two years, doubtless causing some folks to cut back on discretionary expenses. But Pfizer lobbyist Donna Kaylor is still eating $15 sushi rolls in Sacramento, Calif. Kaylor got herself named in the Sacramento News & Review’s restaurant section when she accompanied SN&R scribe Greg Lucas to Ju Hachi: The first visit to Ju Hachi is...

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Barr Pharmaceuticals has filed to make a generic version of Medicis’s acne drug, Solodyn. Medicis stock had received a nice boost at the beginning of December when it announced an unexpected deal with a different company, Impax, over generic versions of Solodyn. The deal meant Medicis would share revenue and development of Solodyn with Impax until 2011. Medicis’s patent on Solodyn...

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A Texas doctor helping the Nigerian government in its claim against Pfizer in the Trovan drug testing case has sued an African investigative reporting website, SaharaReporters, for $25 million, according to Black Star News. SaharaReporters had written that the doctor was a cousin of Nigeria’s attorney general and that the attorney general threatened to scuttle any settlement in the Trovan...

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Schering Plough and Sepracor have settled a patent dispute with Indian generics maker Dr. Reddy’s over Clarinex. The settlement brings forward the end of patent exclusivity on Clarinex to 2012. Previously, the assumption had been that Schering’s exclusivity with Clarinex would last until 2020. The terms of the settlement were undisclosed, making it difficult to calculate the damage...

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In January, Andy Behrman’s non-disclosure agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb expires. This will leave Behrman free to market his new book, Adventures in the Drug Trade: I Was a Big Pharma Pusher. Behrman is best known as the author of Electroboy, the 2002 account of his years spent trying to treat his bipolar disorder with electroshock therapy. He later became a professional patient for...

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GlaxoSmithKline and drug development partner Eurand have received a “complete response letter” from the FDA for a mystery compound — EUR-1048. GSK and Eurand have both declined to reveal what EUR-1048 is for. Eurand’s statement says: EUR-1048 is an orally disintegrating tablet (ODT) formulation with an undisclosed active compound co-developed by Eurand and GSK. In its...

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It’s the last weekend of the month and, per tradition, BNET brings you its weirdest drug stories of December 2008 — all the news that was too minor to mention at the time, but too strange to go unnoted. Doc lets Botox prices fall and rise with Dow Dr. Donald Altman of Irvine, Calif., charges $1 per unit of Allergan’s Botox for every 1,000 points on the Dow Jones Industrial...

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A Pennsylvania official who took $12,000 in fees and honoraria from Pfizer and Janssen while he was in charge of putting antipsychotics such as Risperdal on the state’s dispensary lists for mental hospitals has been convicted of a “felony conflict of interest.” Steve Fiorello (pictured), the state’s former director of pharmacy for the Office of Mental Health, faces five...

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UPDATE: This post has been updated with corrected information regarding the date of the explosion and the date of the inspections. BNET regrets the error. Bayer will pay just $796,500 in EPA fines for pollution caused by a Charleston, W.Va., plant that exploded in August. The fines are not related specifically to the explosion, but to inspections done by the FDA in 2001. The explosion killed...

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