Pharma Industry Archive

Drug companies will be dismayed by a federal appeals court ruling that came down on Friday which gives the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office new powers to limit the way patents are filed. The drug business depends heavily on its ability to patent chemicals and processes for defined lengths of time that give the patent-holder exclusive use of those products, protecting them from competition. The...

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Dr. Joseph Biederman, the controversial Harvard child psychiatrist who promoted the use of Johnson & Johnson’s Risperdal antipsychotic in children, is begging a New Jersey judge to save him from New York Times reporter Gardiner Harris. Harris also sucks as a reporter, Biederman alleges in a letter to the judge, reproduced by the IN VIVO blog. On March 17, Harris sent Beiderman an...

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The lawsuits filed against AstraZeneca over whether the company failed to warn Seroquel users of the weight gain and diabetes risks associated with the drug throws up an interesting sidelight on the practice of “ghostwriting.” Back in 2005, according to the British Medical Journal and the Guardian, AstraZeneca — via medical writing company RxComms – sent a fully written...

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Thomas Farina, a former district sales manager at Pfizer, was found guilty of obstruction of justice after he was found altering documents on his computer during a federal investigation of off-label sales of Bextra and Celebrex. He faces a possible 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He also allegedly instructed three of the reps he supervised to delete and alter incriminating documents on...

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Cephalon is dealing with a PR storm over the question of whether Provigil, its sleep disorder drug, is addictive or not. A study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse suggests that it is: Nora D. Volkow, MD, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), report[s] evidence that Provigil might be more addictive than thought. “There is an increasing use of this medication, and...

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Wyeth has forced Novartis into a corner regarding advertising for Novartis’s Extra-Strength Excedrin. Novartis had been advertising Excedrin with the line, “Start relieving your headache in just 15 minutes.” Wyeth, not believing that claim, challenged Novartis to prove it in a hearing at the National Division of Advertising, a sort of industry advertising police body....

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Abbott Labs CEO Miles White took a pay cut last year. His total compensation was only $28.3 million, down from $33.3 million the year before, per a proxy filing at the SEC. The cut came despite the judgment by Abbott’s board that White “exceeded” his strategic and financial goals. Abbott’s stock outperformed the S&P 500 last year. Revenue and profits were both up....

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Sea Isle City residents have been spooked by the unexplained death of Daiichi Sankyo sales rep Tracy Hottenstein in February. Hottenstein, 35, had been in the Jersey Shore town for the annual Polar Bear Plunge festival, where thousands watch as participants jump into the frigid Ocean. She left the Ocean Drive bar at 2.15 a.m. on Feb. 15, according to the Philly Daily News: Sources tell the...

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Everyone thinks that the Roche-Genentech merger will destroy Genentech’s “culture,” either because the stuffy suits from Roche will crimp the grass-skirt-and-coconut-bra vibe at Genentech or because Genentech scientists will look at all the money they just made on their stock and leave. If that happens, all their knowledge — and thus the value of the company — will...

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An editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association called a university professor “a nobody and a nothing” after he pointed out, correctly, that a JAMA author had failed to disclose a financial relationship with Forest Labs in an article about Lexapro, according to the WSJ. The spat, although entertaining, will probably be examined carefully by the U.S. Department of...

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