Monthly Archives: March 2012

Industry Optimism for Advancing TB Research

By Guest Blogger | Published: March 21, 2012
Scientists optimistic new combination regimens will improve TB treatment and reduce drug resistance, writes Jill Wechsler, Pharm Exec’s Washington Editor. In honor of World TB Day March 24, research organizations and international health agencies announced important advances in the development of new therapies for stemming the spread of increasingly lethal tuberculosis strains. Each year, nearly 9 [...]
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Patent Filing to Drug Approval: A Difficult Journey Even for the Mighty

By Guest Blogger | Published: March 20, 2012
By Ana Nicholls, Healthcare Analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit. The UK Financial Times this week (March 18) flagged up data from Withers & Rogers, a London-based IP firm, showing how the numbers of patent filings from the ten leading pharma companies has dropped in recent years. According to the law firm, only 129 “patent families” [...]
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Cat Fight on Co-Pay Offsets

By William Looney | Published: March 14, 2012
Suing for the Drug Company Suet Pharm Exec is no fortune teller, but our guest author Mason Tenaglia was positively clairvoyant in his January feature on the tussle between pharmacy benefit managers [PBMs] and brand name drug manufacturers over the use of co-pay and discount cards to limit out-of-pocket costs for patients. As predicted, the [...]
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AZ's Seroquel Battle with FDA: A Mark of Desperation?

By Guest Blogger | Published: March 14, 2012
By Ana Nicholls, Healthcare Analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit. Is it a mark of desperation? UK-based pharma company AstraZeneca has resorted to suing the US Food and Drug Administration in a bid to stop it from approving generic competition to Seroquel, the company’s blockbuster anti-depressant, before December 2012. The core patent for Seroquel IR expired in September [...]
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Highlights from the Leerink Swann Healthcare Conference

By Ben Comer | Published: March 13, 2012
Over a hundred public companies, dozens of clinicians, and several regulators participated in investment firm Leerink Swann’s 2012 Healthcare Conference in mid-February. Press was barred from the event, but John Sullivan, Leerink’s director of research, gives PharmExec a few of the take-aways.
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