Category Archives: News

New FDA Campaign Targets Detailing, Trade Shows

By Jill Wechsler | Published: May 19, 2010
In addition to sending out more warning letters and stepping up enforcement activity, the Food and Drug Administration wants health professionals to do more to police drug marketing and advertising. The agency’s “Bad Ad” program urges doctors and other health professionals to report any false or misleading ads or inappropriate marketing pitches. Depending on one’s [...]
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Judgment Day for Pfizer Factories

By Oriana Schwindt | Published: May 19, 2010
For once, pharma sales reps and R&D guys can breathe a sigh of relief. The latest round of industry layoffs comes from Pfizer, but this time it will affect the manufacturing force, which will be downsized by 6,000 employees by 2015. In 2006, the company announced plans to save $4 billion to $5 billion, and after [...]
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Astellas and OSI Come Together

By Oriana Schwindt | Published: May 19, 2010
The months-long saga is finally over: Astellas’ enhanced offer of $57.50 a share—around $4 billion—has finally netted it Melville, NY-based OSI Pharmaceuticals. The Japan-based pharma first extended an acquisition offer of $52 per share ($3.5 billion) to OSI on March 1, only to be met with a resounding “Nay” from the board, which said $52 [...]
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Government to Launch Academic Detailing Program

By Jill Wechsler | Published: April 21, 2010
Some of the $1.1 billion in funding for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) provided by last year’s economic stimulus legislation will be used to support a major doctor education campaign on drugs and medical products and procedures. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) plans to contract this fall with a marketing or advertising company [...]
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Judge Spikes Myriad Genetic’s Control of Genes

By George Koroneos | Published: March 30, 2010
Image via Wikipedia Score one for nature. A US district court judge on Monday declared that pharma companies can’t patent individual genes because they are they are not, in fact, creating them. Last spring, Myriad Genetics was taken to task by the ACLU for monopolizing a patent it had discovered for breast cancer. The civil rights group [...]
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