Pharma Industry Archive

Sanofi-Aventis is to grant “voluntary departures” to 1,300 of its 100,000 staff in an effort to cut R&D costs, the WSJ reported. About 650 jobs will be cut or moved in France. The move was expected, BNET noted June 23.  FiercePharma summarized the complicated announcement best: The French drugmaker will shutter four facilities in its home country and sell a fifth, with plans...

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Abbott Labs‘ management is probably not worrying too much about the $1.7 billion damages award made in favor of Johnson & Johnson’s Centocor unit for Humira’s infringement on the latter’s Remicade patents. (It wasn’t worried enough to put out a press statement, for instance.) That’s because the court that awarded the damages is a famous judicial hellhole....

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Pfizer has been criticized before — once by the FDA — for advertising Viagra in a way that was too light-hearted for a drug intended to treat a medical condition. But that has not stopped the company commissioning a slew of entertaining ads in foreign countries. The ads shown here (click to enlarge) were done by ad agency Ogilvy & Mather for the South African market. They all...

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The cancer scare over Sanofi-Aventis’ Lantus shows just how much power over a company’s drug sales — and its stock — are now concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of experts. Sanofi CEO Chris Viehbacher came out of his corner swinging Monday, saying an article in Study of Diabetes journal Diabetologia that called for more research into a potential link between...

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Reese Witherspoon, vaginal worms and lube technicians! It all happened in June. Is praziquantel the cure for vaginal worms? Winning BNET’s “Least glamorous drug of the month award,” researchers hope to cure plague of Third World women who must wade into rivers to wash clothes. Anti-depressants may damage men’s sperm Uppers cause genetic harm to the little wrigglers, it...

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If Novartis was to buy the Tysabri and bapineuzumab parts of Elan, as suggested in this Reuters report (via the Sunday Times), what, exactly, would be left? Just Prialt (revenues $3.8 million per quarter), Azactam, ($24.2 million) and Maxipime ($10.1 million). With the marketing and infrastructure pieces of Tysabri and bapi transferred to Novartis, the remaining brands look rather less like a...

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Merck should have been cheered by the news that the CDC plans to reinstate booster shots of meningitis vaccine for kids because the vaccine supply has come back online. The company, after all, has a large vaccine division and makes meningitis vaccines. But it is just salt in Merck’s wounds. The supply was interrupted in 2007 because it was Merck’s HiB vaccines that were recalled for...

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The Pfizer sales team leader convicted of deleting computer documents in a federal investigation of off-label Bextra sales called his staff “The Highlanders,” according to an email produced in Massachusetts federal district court. The nickname is a reference to a movie and TV show about an immortal Scottish swordsman from the 1500s who must kill or be killed by other immortals...

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The FDA’s Transparency Task Force is holding hearings into how it can improve its openness to the public. In addition to the hearings, it’s collecting comments from citizens. Adorably, it also has a transparency blog which is run by Erik P. Mettler, FDA’s “Transparency Blog Managing Director.” Your tax dollars at work! The best thing that the FDA can do to make its...

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An Illinois coroner said Wilco songwriter Jay Bennett died of an accidental overdose from a fentanyl painkiller patch. The death should give the pharmaceutical industry pause to ask whether patch delivery systems should be subject to higher standards before being approved. Fentanyl patches, marketed as Duragesic by Johnson & Johnson’s PriCara unit and also available as generics, are...

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