Pharma Industry Archive

The SEC has launched an insider trading probe around Schering-Plough and its March merger agreement with Merck, according to the WSJ. Stock in SGP jumped 8 percent on Friday March 6; the merger was announced on Monday March 9. This graphic shows that on Thursday, SGP stock was heading down before it lifted on Friday (click to enlarge). The big jump comes Monday, when Merck announces it will pay...

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The FDA granted priority review status to a drug Pfizer is developing that will cure curvature of the penis. BNET readers first learned about Xiaflex – and the rather less well publicized fact that it must be administered by injection into the organ itself – back in December. The Philadelphia Business Journal reports that Auxilium, Pfizer’s partner on Xiaflex, secured the...

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The FDA has approved a competitor to Allergan’s Botox. The new wrinkle-fighting drug will be marketed by Medicis as Dysport. (Medicis had intended to call it Reloxin, but apparently it’s become Dysport.) Medicis partner Ipsen will market Dysport for cervical dystonia. The company said: Medicis anticipates shipping DYSPORT(TM) for aesthetic use in the U.S. during the next 30 to 60...

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Schering-Plough CEO Fred Hassan took a massive compensation cut in 2008 but he will more than make up for that with an even larger potential $51 million change-of-control jackpot triggered by Merck’s acquisition of his company. All the top execs at Schering took huge compensation hits in 2008 as SGP stock tanked during the year, according to a filing with the SEC. (However, sales were up...

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Someone is impersonating prominent members of the pharma and biotech world on Facebook, including Vertex Pharmaceuticals chief executive Joshua Boger, a chief science officer at Pfizer and Forbes drug writer Matt Herper. The latter wrote a half-amusing, half-disturbing story for Forbes about how he was duped by the Facebook faker, friending “Rick Weiss,” the former Washington Post...

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Dendreon’s IMPACT study of its cancer vaccine Provenge beat the FDA’s 22 percent “reduction in risk of death” standard by just half a percent: The company said it reduced “risk of death” by 22.5 percent today. Dendreon stock plunged on the news and trading in it had to be halted, according to the WSJ, and then rallied strongly after the results, according to...

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Eli Lilly CEO John Lechleiter complicated the battle for Amylin today by telling Reuters he was not interested in buying the company. It was widely suspected that investor Carl Icahn, who is in a three-way war for control of Amylin’s board of directors, wants to dress up Amylin for a sale to Lilly. Icahn recently called Amylin a “dictatorship” because it refused to listent to...

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Corey Goodman, the guy hired to run Pfizer’s “Bioinnovation Center” in San Francisco, signed an omertà-style vow upon leaving the company: He must never talk about Pfizer again, to anyone, ever, the agreement basically states. Pfizer, which had too many R&D chiefs following its decision to merge with Wyeth, made Goodman an offer he couldn’t refuse: Leave quietly and...

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Pfizer’s Q1 2009 numbers are worse than they appear at first glance. An accounting maneuver makes the company look much more productive than it is; and sales of its key franchises are weak — even Viagra, down 1 percent, seems to have reached its peak. The basics: Revenues were down 8 percent to $10.8 billion; net income was down 2 percent to $3.8 billion. None of this was a...

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Arena Pharmaceuticals is to lay off 31 percent, or 130 employees, before June 22, the company told the SEC. Arena staffers — whose future is dependent on an anti-obesity drug, lorcaserin – may be forgiven for wondering how it has all gone wrong so quickly. In February, Arena CEO Jack Lief said: We will be announcing very important results of a very important study … We have...

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