Targacept says it will eliminate 65 jobs
Drugmaker Targacept Inc. said Wednesday that it plans to eliminate 65 jobs, cutting its work force by almost half, as it looks for ways to save money after an experimental depression drug failed. Targacept had 142 employees as of Feb. 29 and said it expects to save $12.9 million per year from the job cuts. […]
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Astrazeneca CEO Departs Amid Disappointing Quarter
Source Poor David Brennan. At the annual meeting of PhRMA in Boston only two weeks ago, he was stoutly defending his strategy as AstraZeneca ceo. Now comes the news that he is departing. As of June 1, the struggling drugmaker will be temporarily led by Simon Lowth, chief financial officer. Ironically, just a month ago, […]
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McKesson Shells Out $190 Million in Fines for Inflated Pricing
Source Yet another violation of the False Claims Act. This time, McKesson agreed to pay more than $190 million for reporting inflated pricing for a number of prescription meds, which caused Medicaid to overpay. The big wholesaler reported inflated prices to First Data Bank, which publishes prices that are used by most state Medicaid programs […]
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Dying Mother Begs for Genentech Cancer Drug in Youtube Video
Source In a video posted on YouTube two weeks ago, Diane Gant, 46, says that she is dying of Stage 4 breast cancer. Much like a scene from a film called ‘My Life Without Me,’ in which a dying mom tape records messages for her young daughters to offer advice and hope for each of […]
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J&J CEO Under Fire for Big Bonuses Amid Scandals
Source Etched in stone on the side of the Johnson & Johnson headquarters building in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the famed credo been seen as an oath of responsibility and the corporate equivalent of the Ten Commandments for countless generations of employees. “We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to […]
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Big Liver Meeting in Barcelona
Source One of the biggest medical meetings – the European Association for the Study of the Liver – just ended in Barcelona, Spain, and the five-day event was closely watched thanks to hepatitis C. The affliction, you may recall, is one of the hottest growth areas for the pharmaceutical industry in the past year. The […]
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FDA’s enhanced drug safety program is effective, CDER report says
FDA has strengthened its oversight of drugs after they’ve been approved, thanks to its updated postmarket drug safety program, according to a new report by the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). The report, Advances in FDA’s Safety Program for Marketed Drugs, says that FDA now is able to oversee the safety of […]
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How the FDA Stifles New Cures, Part I: The Rising Cost of Clinical Trials
Today, the Manhattan Institute released a study I authored, entitled “Stifling New Cures: The True Cost of Lengthy Clinical Drug Trials.†(You can read the full report here.) The paper discusses how outdated FDA policies are making drug development too expensive and too risky. In this excerpt, I describe the factors that are driving up […]
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Merck KGaA to Close Merck Serono Site in Geneva, Cut Jobs
Merck KGaA (MRK) plans to close the Geneva headquarters of its Serono unit, five years after buying Europe’s biggest biotechnology company for about $13.3 billion to expand a drug business that has since faced development and regulatory setbacks. Merck plans to transfer 750 positions to other locations, the Darmstadt, Germany-based company said in a statement […]
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FDA sent 40% more warning letters to overseas sites in ‘11
The FDA sent 40 per cent more GMP warning letters to biopharma facilities outside the US in fiscal 2011 than the previous year.
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