Pharma Industry Archive

Layoffs due to restructuring, mergers, acquisitions and even bankrupties are flooding the biotech job market with talent, but venture capitalists say finding great entrepreneurs is still the hardest part of their job. Bob More, general partner at Frazier Healthcare Ventures, said in a recent email chat that “the capital is there for good ideas — it really is.” But finding...

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An analysis of drug sales force effectiveness by Eastbourne Capital shows ImClone coming top and Amylin coming bottom among companies of similar size. Gilead comes in second best. You can take the analysis with a pinch of salt because Eastbourne is using it to convince shareholders that Amylin management is lousy enough to be replaced with its own slate of directors. (Click to enlarge the...

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Johnson & Johnson has a competitor for Priligy, its anti-premature ejaculation pill, the LA Times reports: Dr. Michael G. Wyllie and his colleagues at Plethora Solutions Ltd. in London have developed an anesthetic spray called PSD502, or Tempe. A combination of lidocaine and prilocaine, it is absorbed only by the glans penis… Time to orgasm increased a mean of 6.3 times in the men...

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Not only did Merck produce a series of fake medical journals to promote Vioxx in Australia, but the articles were ghostwritten by doctors who deny they worked on them, according to Heartwire. Dr. Marvin Konstam said he didn’t know too much about a 2001 journal article on Vioxx, despite the fact that he was listed as the article’s lead author, Heartwire says. The paper concluded that...

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Medicis revenues declined 23 percent to $100 million in Q1 2009, underlining how dependent the company is on the launch of its competitor to Botox. Net income was just $329,000, down from $20.5 million. While the company was expecting business to fall off — it’s concentrated in vanity pharma, the type of discretionary spend that people pull back on in a recession —...

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A settlement in the Pfizer Trovan case looked so imminent that the governor of Nigeria’s Kano state (pictured) reportedly headed to London to sign it today, but a U.S. judge ordered a hearing into whether the settlement is fair, and that is scheduled for June 1. Back story: The case stems from tests Pfizer did in 1996 during a meningitis outbreak in the African nation. Eleven children...

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One thing that all sides agree on in the tripartite fight over control of Amylin’s board of directors is that the launch of exenatide once weekly, the long-acting version of its diabetes drug Byetta, is crucial to the company. A successful launch could add hundreds of millions of dollars to Amylin’s revenues. But even though the company has already submitted its new drug application...

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If there was one biotech on every banker’s list of cash shells, one dog that could make bankruptcy look like a good option, one name synonymous with snickers and snide comments, it was Vanda Pharmaceuticals. Which makes the FDA’s approval of Vanda’s schizophrenia drug Fanapt (iloperidone) surprising, to say the least. The Street’s Adam Feuerstein said it best: Hell...

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GlaxoSmithKline put out a press release offering a 50 percent price cut on all their medicines to anyone without insurance, regardless of income — but the release was a mistake and the company has retracted the statement. The statement was made-up to test a PR distribution system. But then every PR rep’s worst nightmare happened: A fake release full of bogus (and potentially costly)...

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Xiaflex, the penis-straightening drug being developed by Auxilium for Pfizer, causes “a lot of different reactions such as swelling and redness and bruising” in some patients, according to Auxilium chief medical officer Anthony DelConte. DelConte made the remark in a conference call with analysts May 6. The news adds a new wrinkle to the unlikeliest drug in Pfizer’s pipeline....

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