Pharma Industry Archive

U.S. government awards $486 million flu contract to Novartis — The deal funds a Novartis plant to be built in Holly Springs, North Carolina; the plant will employee 300 people and will be capable of producing 150 million doses of flu vaccine within six months in the event of a national pandemic. [Source: PharmaTimes] Roche to dominate cancer sales by 2012, especially with Genentech...

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Kanawha County, W.V., has won a years-long court battle against Bayer to get the drug company to pay its taxes properly. West Virginia’s Channel 3 reports: Bayer Corp. could soon get a formal request from Kanawha County officials for almost $91,000 in taxes erroneously refunded to it more than five years ago. Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper says commissioners will be asked...

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Bristol-Myers Squibbb just won a ruling in an Indian court that could put generic makers there on the defensive. For years, the Indian drug business has grown primarily from making generics. Companies like Dr. Reddy’s, Ranbaxy, Cilpa and Hetero Drugs have chosen to copy compounds marketed in the West rather than do their own R&D. But in a case that pits BMS against Hetero, a court has...

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Lilly pays $1.4 billion to settle Zyprexa claims — Today’s big story is the exorbitant sum Lilly must pay for its sales reps’ off-label promotion of Zyprexa as an Alzheimer’s therapy — supposedly a record sum. The company will be officially monitored for 5 years. BNET’s Jim Edwards has the full story on the ruling’s impact on Lilly’s bottom line:...

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Roche has emerged as both victim and enabler in a big corruption case whose basis was the arcane pricing policies of U.S. drugs. In the case, two brothers who ran a medical supplies company were sentenced to nine years in prison for skimming contracts and avoiding taxes. They had contracts with Roche, Johnson & Johnson and Wyeth to take drugs and supply them to hospitals. However, because...

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Pfizer pawns off irrelevant drugs — Pfizer just sold rights to over 100 experimental drugs. The closeout comes on the heels of the company’s autumn promise to streamline R&D; the ditched treatments focus on conditions Pfizer will no longer study, like obesity and high cholesterol. [Source: WSJ Health Blog] Genentech: mum’s still the word on Roche — File this in the...

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AstraZeneca has ended its funding of a brass band, but the company denies the cut was made because of recession-related budgeting reasons. Few knew that AstraZeneca funded a brass band in the first place, but the Macclesfield, U.K., Express reports that the drug giant has ended its sponsorship of the marching orchestra: The multinational is tightening its purse strings and has announced cuts in...

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Police and Pfizer employees are wondering whether a woman who was shot on a Pfizer campus in Chesterfield, Mo., wounded herself and is making the whole thing up, according to KTVI in St. Louis. The shooting last Thursday prompted a lockdown of the campus there. Pfizer employees’ cars were searched as they left work. The woman, whose identity has not been released, said she had been...

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Elan, the troubled Irish pharma company, has put itself up for sale just as it emerged that it will spend another six months testing bapineuzumab, its experimental Alzheimer’s treatment. The drug has previously been linked to brain swelling in some patients. The sale raises the possibility that Elan’s bizarre managers — spread across three continents — could be ousted....

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Merck reassigns Gardasil exec to heart treatments — Senior vice president Bev Lybrand will no longer oversee the HPV vaccine program she has led. Under her tenure, Gardasil launched to great success, but recently failed to secure a broader indication which would have boosted sales. Merck has apparently decided Lybrand is better at ushering new drugs to market; the company wants to...

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