David Sell
Drugmaker Shire, plc, says it reached an agreement to pay $57.5 million to settle allegations related to its marketing practices that were being investigated by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia.
Shire is headquartered in Ireland, but its main office is in suburban Philadelphia.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia declined comment.
David Sell
Merck's fourth-quarter profit fell seven percent as sales of its former best-selling drug Singulair were depressed by generic competition and the company said it would delay seeking government approval of a much-anticipated osteoporosis drug.
Merck is based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., but has a big facility in the Philadelphia suburb of West Point, Montgomery County. On Friday morning, the company released financial results for the 2012 fourth quarter and full-year.
Singulair, which is a once-per-day pill used to treat chronic asthma, brought in $5.48 billion in 2011 and followed its quarterly average of about $1.3 billion through the first half of 2012. But the patent expired in the United States on Aug. 3 and the U.S. sales fell 97 percent in the fourth quarter as cheaper generic drugs took over the market. For the full year, the worldwide Singulair sales were $3.9 billion, a 30 percent drop.
David Sell
UPDATE: Zoetis, which stock market folks said was the biggest IPO since Facebook, had a good first day. The stock started at $26 per share and closed at $31.05 on the New York Stock exchange.
(From this morning......)
Zoetis, which is the animal drug business of Pfizer, Inc., is scheduled to begin began trading Friday under the ticker symbol ZTS on the New York Stock Exchange.
David Sell
British-based drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc, which has its regional headquarters in Wilmington, said Thursday morning that revenue and profit declined for 2012 and would do so again in 2013.
The company said in a statement that it expected sales revenue in 2013 to decline in the "mid-to-high single digits," using constant currency exchange rates. With operating costs likely to be slightly higher, the earnings per share will decline by more than that.
The company did not announce any further layoffs, having reduced its workforce several times in the last couple years.
David Sell
Endo Health Solutions has talked in recent weeks with other pharmaceutical companies about buying the Chadds Ford-based drugmaker, Reuters reported Wednesday.
A link to the Reuters story is here.
The talks involved Warner Chilcott Plc and Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., Reuters reported, citing sources it did not identify.
David Sell
Federal judge J. Curtis Joyner sentenced South Philadelphia pill mill doctor Richard Minicozzi to seven years in prison on Tuesday, but he also had harsh words for the medical-school trained physicians who opt to make big money dispensing prescription pain medication without sufficient care.
Joyner referred to the "epidemic" of misuse of prescription pain medication and that doctors can’t “be dispensing them willy nilly without repercussions.”
Wednesday's Inquirer story on the sentencing is here.
David Sell
Vaccines sometimes work wonderfully in a modern laboratory with great facilities and healthy patients (or parents of patients) who can follow all directions, but.....
Does it work in places with no modern health-care facilities?
Does it work in places with no electricity or sporadic power?
David Sell
Tim Anderson of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., is among the Wall Street research analysts we follow.
Anderson earned medical and business degrees at the University of Chicago.
This being earnings season, we're sharing some of his thoughts on pharma companies that he covers that have a large local presence and have not yet issued their fourth-quarter and full-year 2012 reports. Bear in mind that AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline figures sometimes show up in British pounds because the companies are based in the United Kingdom.
David Sell
Valley Forged-based pharmaceutical wholesaler AmerisourceBergen said Thursday that its quarterly revenue rose 5.7 percent from the same period in 2011.
AmerisourceBergen's financial calendar does not mesh with typical post-on-the-wall calendars, meaning it closed its first quarter on Dec. 31, 2012.
The company is one of the three biggest drug wholesalers in the nation and the biggest Pennsylvania company as measured by revenue.
David Sell
New York - Johnson & Johnson might sell its Ortho Clinical Diagnostics business if it can find the right price, chief executive officer Alex Gorsky said Tuesday morning.
The division has its headquarters in Raritan, N.J., and its research and development center in Rochester, N.Y.
Gorsky said J&J is "initiating the first steps," in the divestiture process of that division.
- Adolor
- Almac
- AmerisourceBergen
- AstraZeneca
- Auxilium
- Bayer
- Celgene
- Cephalon
- Endo
- GlaxoSmithKline
- Johnson & Johnson
- Kensey Nash
- Lannett
- Merck
- Pfizer
- Roche
- Sanofi-aventis
- Shire
- Stryker
- Synthes
- Teva
- ViroPharma
- West
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
- Clinical Trials
- Food and Drug Administration
- Office of Inspector General, Health and Human Services
- OIG Most-wanted list of fugitives
- Securities and Exchange Commission/Edgar filings
- U.S. Attorney's Office/Eastern Pennsylvania, health-care fraud
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
- BIO
- Jersey Association of Medical Equipment Services
- Pennsylvania Association of Medical Suppliers
- Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
- Science Center
- American Health Lawyers Association
- Drug and Device Law
- Orange Book blog
- Taxpayers Against Fraud
- Bio Century
- Bio Space
- Cafe Pharma
- Financial Times
- In The Pipeline
- Monday Morning
- New York Times/Prescriptions
- Pharma Live
- Pharma Marketing
- Pharmalot
- The Placebo Effect
- Wall Street Journal/Health blog
