Never mind that Roche plans to move much of its US pharma operations from Nutley, New Jersey, to South San Francisco, if it succeeds in winning Genentech. Roche execs were happy this week to host New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, who faces a shrinking pharma industry in the Garden State, [...]

The health care giant, however, doesn't say exactly what info the agency is seeking about Doribax, which Johnson & Johnson hopes will be approved for treating hospital-acquired pneumonia. The drug is already approved to treat intra-abdominal and urinary tract infections. Last month, an FDA advisory committee narrowly endorsed the intravaneous [...]

The circumstances surrounding the recently released SEAS study, which unexpectedly revealed a few dozen cases of cancer and cancer-related deaths among patients given the controversial Vytorin cholesterol pill, is apparently angering the House Energy & Commerce Committee. As part of its ongoing investigation into how Merck and Schering-Plough handled clinical [...]

The 'T' word is all the rage among big pharma execs these days. Now, Glaxo has caught the transparency bug. Beginning in February 2009, the drugmaker says it will "proactively" report educational and charitable grants provided to US health-related organizations. Its report will be updated on a quarterly basis and [...]

Those wildly popular statins, which are taken by millions of Americans, don't raise the risk of cancer, after all, according to a new report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Last year, the same authors from Tufts University School of Medicine published a paper that found cancer [...]

Despite Pfizer's best efforts, the lawyers for the family of a woman who died four years ago after taking the Celebrex painkiller have succeeded in convincing a New Jersey state court judge that Fred should be deposed and his videotaped testimony shown in court this fall. Why does this matter? [...]

A federal judge has ordered PTC Therapeutics to supply an experimental drug to a 16-year-old Minnesota boy who is terminally ill with a rare form of muscular dystrophy. However, the decision offers no immediate relief to Jacob Gunvalson, because the teenager can't begin taking the drug immediately, due to federal [...]

A federal appeals court will soon decide whether to allow testimony from an expert witness who sought to show that the Accutane acne med causes a chronic bowel disorder, the Associated Press writes. Yesterday, attorneys urged a three-judge panel to admit the testimony from the expert, which is central to [...]

In a bid to cut legal costs, Pfizer is creating a stir among lawyers after selecting just one law firm to handle almost all of its employment-related litigation. Moreover, the drugmaker is reportedly pioneering a capped-fee arrangement for the outside legal work, according to Corporate Counsel. The winning law firm, [...]

Do you recognize the man in the photo? Why, it's none other than Sam Waksal, who became infamous for tipping off Martha Stewart when shares in ImClone Systems, the drugmaker that he founded, were about to take a dive back in 2001. A photographer for The New York Post took [...]

In the latest bombshell over Vioxx, a report in the Annals of Internal Medicine concludes Merck conducted a so-called seeding study of the notorious painkiller. This type of trial, whether or not the design is scientifically sound, primarily serves a marketing purpose. And this raises a few key issues, such [...]

Is it possible? Have Vytorin prescriptions finally hit bottom? Maybe. Back in January, when preliminary results for the Enhance trial were released, scrips were about 1.8 million, but then sunk to 1.33 million in June. Last month, though, scrips rose about 90,000, according to a filing by Schering-Plough with the [...]

Layoffs and restructurings are taking a toll on drug and device makers in New Jersey, which for decades has prided itself on being home to many of the world's biggest such companies. However, a survey released today shows employment fell 1 percent in 2007 from a year earlier among the [...]

Company 2007 2012 Percent Change Schering-Plough 0.38 1.58 315.8% Amgen 4.50 1.46 -67.6% Bristol-Myers Squibb 1.08 0.84 -21.7% Wyeth 0.60 0.49 -18.2% Abbott Labs 1.73 0.42 75.7% Johnson & Johnson 0.39 0.38 -2.4% GlaxoSmithKline 0.27 0.32 17.3% Eli Lilly 6.64 0.29 -95.6% Novartis 2.27 0.27 -88.2% Merck 0.51 0.26 -49.0% [...]