Pharma Industry Archive

Johnson & Johnson wants its Remicade back. It filed with an arbitrator on May 5 to unravel its distribution agreement with Schering-Plough, in light of the latter’s merger with Merck, the WSJ reports. There’s a clause in J&J’s agreement with Schering that says if there’s a “change of control” at Schering, J&J can end the agreement. Thus Schering...

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Professional patient Andy Behrman’s last job as a PR agent for high-end baby clothing store Petit Trésor ended badly. He’s suing the shop for $170,000, claiming owners Nina Takesh and Samantha Winch (pictured) didn’t pay him for the publicity he created for their West Hollywood and Brentwood shops. Behrman became news in the drug business recently after he tried and failed to...

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Onyx’s lawsuit against Bayer over their joint venture on cancer drug Nexavar reads like a love affair gone wrong — complete with allegations of Bayer going behind Onyx’s back, cheating on the company as it concealed its intent to steal Onyx’s baby. You can download Onyx’s complaint here. Meanwhile, here’s a digest. Like all breakups, one party is horribly...

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A new batch of email and memos from the federal litigation over AstraZeneca’s antipsychotic Seroquel detail company executives discussing off-label promotion, the stretching of data to make claims that Seroquel did not cause weight gain, the cover-up of a trial that showed negative results and suggestions that researchers who “slow up” the publication of positive studies...

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GlaxoSmithKline has started a blog, becoming only the fourth* major drug company to launch an official unofficial voice on the web. The world of drug company blogs is a placid, uneventful place. According to John Mack’s PageFlakes site, where he collates drug blogs, GSK’s MoreThanMedicine.us.gsk will be only the fourth Big Pharma blog to exist. Drug companies thus far have been far...

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Wyeth is being sued by the Department of Justice over its alleged attempt to avoid giving Medicaid the “best price” on its Protonix antacid drugs. The reason the DOJ was able to make the case was because Wyeth’s own vendors gathered evidence of the alleged scheme — evidence that is now being used against the company in the qui tam whistleblower suit unveiled Monday....

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Dendreon’s successful Phase 3 trial results for Provenge are in — so let the speculation begin! Dan Rosenblum over at Seeking Alpha thinks potential sales of the prostate cancer drug are being understimated because analysts fail to take into account off-label use of the drug. He says: Most of the analyst reports I have seen assume peak sales in the U.S. somewhere between one and two...

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Merck paid “nurses” to comb medical records for potential Vioxx patients, an Australian court has heard. The nurses went through patient records with doctors’ permission, looking for 100 patients at each doc who weren’t on Vioxx but could be, according to The Australian. The paper reported that Merck sought to persuade pharmacists to recommend Vioxx to patients who were...

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Pfizer is emerging as an unexpected champion of the poor against Nigeria’s kleptocracy as it negotiates a $75 million settlement in the Trovan case. Back story: The case stems from tests Pfizer did in 1996 during a meningitis outbreak in the African nation. Eleven children died. Trovan’s use was restricted in the U.S. and banned in Europe. The events may have inspired the book and...

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Professional patient Andy Behrman is trying to turn his 15 minutes of Wall Street Journal fame into gold. Shortly after the Journal published a story about how he decided to become a critic of Bristol-Myers Squibb and Abilify following the company’s decision to stop paying him, Behrman sent a rambling email to his “friends” and “3,000+ mental health support groups”...

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