Pharma’s Cutting Edge

 
Goodbye Wyeth, Schering-Plough, Genentech. 
The wave of Pharma acquisitiveness has arisen anew after a short period of dormancy.  It seems that every time this happens pundits, myself included, take a position on either side of the mega-merger debate  Resolved:  “Pharma mega mergers hinder pharmaceutical innovation and thus rob long-term investors of shareholder value”.  Personally, I’ve always [...]

March 15th, 2009 | Category: For Investors, R&D | Leave a comment

As regular readers will remember, I am a user of ezetimibe (Zetia, Schering-Plough & Merck) for LDL-C reduction beyond that provided from the statin I also take.  Before and after ENHANCE preliminary results were released and again after they were published, I wrote editorials outlining my opinion that appropriately selected users of ezitimibe should in most cases [...]

January 9th, 2009 | Category: Clinical Research, FDA | Leave a comment

I recently reported on Sanofi-Aventis’ decision to pull rimonabant from EU shelves.  Since then, S-A has stopped all rimonabant clinical development. 
I also told you that clinical success of Pfizer’s Phase 3 CB1 antagonist, CP-945,598, seemed dubious.  Yesterday, Pfizer pulled the plug on their drug, citing “changing regulatory perspectives on the risk/benefit profile of the CB1 class [...]

November 7th, 2008 | Category: R&D, Technology | Leave a comment

As you have likely already read, Pfizer has recently prioritized its portfolio and will nix discovery and early clinical development for drugs in several disease areas, including dyslipidemia/atherosclerosis, osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, and obesity independent of diabetes.
You might be wondering why the world’s largest pharmaceutical company is abandoning treatments for some of the West’s most common chronic medical problems.  I [...]

October 1st, 2008 | Tags: portfolio management | Category: R&D, Technology | Leave a comment