Pharma Industry Archive

Here’s an open question on Dendreon’s announcement Tuesday of positive results in its Provenge phase 3 studies: Did news of the results leak out among insiders on Monday, the day before the announcement? Here’s a transcript from CNBC of Mike Huckman’s interview with CEO Mitchell Gold. (Unfortunately, it’s all in caps, apologies): HUCKMAN: YESTERDAY YOUR STOCK WAS...

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Abbott Labs’ stock took a beating today even though it posted a 53 percent gain in net income, to $1.4 billion. Investors didn’t like that $1 billion of that profit came from a one-off item reflecting the end of a joint venture with TAP. Revenues were flat at $6.7 billion. Behind the numbers, however, is more worrying news for Abbott. The company may have taken its eye off the ball...

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Dendreon’s announcement that its Phase 3 prostate cancer vaccine Provenge “met its primary endpoint of improving overall survival” in the crucial IMPACT trial will likely have the prostate cancer activists dancing in the streets. But Provenge still faces significant scientific, regulatory and financial hurdles before it validates the massive expectations heaped upon it. For...

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Johnson & Johnson’s sales declined 7.2 percent to $15 billion in Q1 2008; its net income declined 2.5 percent to $3.5 billion. That was not much of a surprise given the recent announcement of 900 layoffs at the company. The numbers indicate that the company is engaged in a fierce cost-cutting battle as its sales fall. J&J hacked 10.1 percent off its sales and marketing budget....

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Noven rewarded its top managers with hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses last year despite the company’s flagship Daytrana ADHD patch being mired in two product recalls. Noven has had a rough couple of years. The FDA identified manufacturing problems with Daytrana back in 2007, and they still aren’t fixed. Consumers had difficulty peeling the backs off the patches properly,...

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Onyx finally made a profit last year — the first time the cancer drug developer has gone into the black in the last five years. It made $1.9 million and returned just 3 cents a share, on revenues of $194 million. Those revenues were nearly double the year before as Onyx’s deal with Bayer on the drug Nexavar fully kicked in. Could that profit have been any higher? Yes, it could, had...

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Former Star-Ledger pharmaceuticals reporter Ed Silverman is considering reviving his blog, Pharmalot. He is now the legal owner of “Pharmalot.com” and is keeping the brand alive in the form of a Twitter stream until he can figure out what to do with it. The blog, which went dark in January, was probably the best-read drug news outlet on the web. Its closing prompted an unusually...

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The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education said it decided against a ban on company funded CME, according to MM&M. The decision is thunderingly predictable, because CME providers are simply not in a financial position to reject company funded CME even if they wanted to. MM&M: The ACCME had posed a ban as one possible solution to concerns about the independence of CME...

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Only in India: 7,000 drug retailers have refused to carry products from Novartis and its generic unit Sandoz because the company sells drugs direct to consumers at the same price as the retailers do, according to The Economic Times. By doing so, the companies keep the profit margin that’s built in for retailers. The retailers have refused to handle any of the 198 drugs the two companies...

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The Amylin board of directors is crumbling in its resistance to insurgent investors Carl Icahn and Eastbourne Capital. Amylin founder Howard Greene resigned as director and wrote a letter suggesting that chairman Joseph Cook should also step down. Greene said he won’t vote for Cook because: A majority of you decided we could not win our proxy fight if we did not replace two ex-CEO Board...

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