Pharma Industry Archive

It’s that time again — another month is done. Here’s your roundup of the strange stuff that didn’t quite make the front page. Boffins comb old Bayer plant and find abandoned legless robot The Hartford Courant: Jeffrey Townsend, an evolutionary biologist, made his way Friday to a warehouse on the former grounds of a pharmaceutical company to look for free stuff. He...

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AstraZeneca should promote publications manager John Tumas (if he’s still with the company) and give him a bonus. In the ongoing Seroquel trials in Florida, he alone is emerging as the voice of reason inside that company. Back story: AstraZeneca is accused of marketing its antipsychotic without warning patients about the dangers of weight gain and diabetes. (See “AstraZeneca’s...

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The 230 people being laid off by Elan Pharmaceuticals as part of its “further alignment of resources” and “on-going strategic review process” might want to ask whether Elan’s three corporate jets are being laid off too. Elan’s use of corporate jets is an issue for Jack Schuler, the investor who has become a professional thorn in Elan’s side. On Feb. 8...

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Employees of Forest Labs and that company’s rivals should read the U.S. government’s complaint against the company, which alleges off-label promotion of Lexapro and Celexa for use in children. The complaint names executives, indicates who knew what and when, and goes into the details of many individual sales reps’ actions. Many, many execs and reps at Forest will be sweating...

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An AstraZeneca executive in charge of clinical research on Seroquel had sexual affairs with a researcher and a study writer, plaintiffs in a Florida lawsuit claim. BNET first wrote about the sex-for-secrets aspect of the Seroquel litigation on Feb. 17. Now Furious Seasons blogger Philip Dawdy revealed a dynamite legal filing describing how Dr. Wayne MacFadden, AZ’s former US medical...

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Eli Lilly is advertising its new blood-thinner, Effient, even though it is not yet approved in the U.S. The drug (also known as prasugrel) is approved in Europe as “Efient,” but ads in which the drug’s name is spelled with two f’s have appeared on the cardiologytoday.com web site. “Effient” appears to be the brand name Lilly is seeking in the U.S. Clicking on...

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Lawyers for Bayer have successfully persuaded the U.S. Chemical Safety Board to delay discussing why a Bayer chemical plant in West Virginia blew up, killing two people, last August. The public meeting, at which the safety board was to brief Kanawha Valley residents on its investigation into the explosion, was planned for March 19. The West Virginia Gazette: Two weeks ago, Bayer lawyers warned...

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A ranking of drug company sales productivity shows Gilead gets the most revenues in return for every dollar invested in reps and marketing. At the other end of the table, Sepracor gets the least bang for its sales, general and administrative buck (see table below). The ranking also shows there appears to be very little relationship between size and productivity. Some large companies, like...

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A judge has ordered a former Pfizer executive convicted of distributing child pornography to pay $200,000 to a girl whose images he downloaded. It is the first time that restitution has been ordered paid by someone who consumed child pornography but did not themselves abuse the victim, according to The Day. The court appears to have chosen Alan Hesketh, the former global patent dirctor at...

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They say that nobody should start a company to make money. Here’s proof: for all the buzz about biotech, in 40 years (really, 42, since Genentech’s founding in 1976), the biotech industry as a whole never made a profit — until last year. Drawing on data from publicly-traded companies, Peter Winter, editor at the biotech merchant bank Burrill & Co., put together a report...

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