Supreme Court slaps pharma aside in pay-for-delay ruling
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in the big pay-for-delay case. In a 5-3 vote, the court ruled that the Federal Trade Commission has the right to challenge brand-name drugmakers' patent settlements with generics companies. It's a slap in the face for the drug industry, which has united behind the settlements, saying they speed generics to market rather than impeding competition.
20 Highest-Paid Biopharma CEOs 2012
Call it a rite of spring. Every year about this time, FiercePharma takes a look at executive compensation in the industry, and we rank the highest-paid CEOs. If you're a regular reader, you'll notice that this year's list is longer than previous editions. And there's a reason for that: curiosity.Are the CEOs on this list worth their price? What's a supersuccessful new drug worth? Should CEO pay be docked for R&D failures? What about failed launches? Should other, lower-paid executives earn more?
For years, cardio was king. The world's all-time best-selling drug, Pfizer's Lipitor, after all, is an antihyperlipidemic drug. Cardio drugs have traditionally made up one of the largest categories of therapeutic treatment in the drug universe. Last year, the top 10 cardio drugs racked up sales of $28.644 billion, down 23% from the $37.271 billion they sold in 2011. Still, the group has made a lot of money for its companies for years and, in some cases, completely changed the treatment of heart disease. It is an interesting list. Only Merck has two drugs in the top 10. The other drugmakers make up a broad swath of the pharma industry.
Top 10 pharma companies by employeesBeing the largest company by any number of measures--revenues, earnings, those kinds of yardsticks--is a good thing. Being the largest by number of employees is trickier, unless yours is also the largest by those other measures. As we have seen time and again in recent years in the pharma industry, having lots of employees and falling revenues is a formula that leads to layoffs. As a whole, the top 10 companies had fewer employees at the end of 2012 than at the end of 2011. Read the full report >>
Icahn ally added to Forest board
Pursuant to an agreement with Carl Icahn and affiliated entities, Forest Laboratories' ($FRX) board of directors has appointed Vincent Intrieri as a new independent member of its board of directors. Intrieri sits on the boards of a number of companies, like Navistar International, in which Forest investor Carl Icahn has invested. Story
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Who wins after SCOTUS pay-for-delay decision? Lawyers
The pay-for-delay ruling is in. That means legal experts and industry analysts are poring over the decision, trying to assess its consequences. Any consensus? By eschewing the Federal Trade Commission's position--that patent-settlement payments should be assumed anticompetitive--the Supreme Court left pharma some leeway. That's better than it might have been. But the choice also leaves a lot of uncertainty on the table. Here's a roundup of opinions and commentary >>
FDA probes long-acting Zyprexa safety after 2 patients die
Two patients have died unexpectedly after their Zyprexa Relprevv injections, and the FDA is now investigating. The agency says the patients died three to four days after receiving "an appropriate dose," and both had "very high" blood levels of olanzapine, the long-acting Zyprexa product's active ingredient.
Want a raise, pharma reps? Get into biotech sales instead
We regularly dig into compensation for top executives, but figures on the biopharma rank and file are harder to come by. So, if you've been waiting for those numbers, here's a taste: MedReps.com has run the numbers on sales people in the medical field. The big winners? Sales folks repping biotech products, with their average $164,783 in annual compensation.
UPDATED: Charmed by orphan drugs, suitors line up for ViroPharma
While the U.S. drug market may be shrinking, specialty drugs are on the up-and-up--and drugmakers are taking note. Orphan drugs for rare diseases are hot commodities, and reported takeover interest in specialty producer ViroPharma shows that so, too, are their makers.
Newly minted Sanofi diabetes med fails to impress German pricing regulators
Sanofi's new diabetes drug hit a setback in Germany. The country's increasingly strict pricing regulators say Lyxumia delivers "no additional benefit" compared with existing drugs. If the decision sticks, then Sanofi would lose the power to price Lyxumia at a brand-name premium.
AstraZeneca homes in on new HQ and research site in Cambridge
Over the next three years the pharma company plans to build a $500 million complex on an 11-acre site at the Cambridge BioMedical Campus.
From Our Sister Sites
Biotech IPOs are officially back in vogue. Bluebird bio--set up to develop new gene therapies for orphan diseases--priced its IPO at $17 a share, actually above its range. The biotech raised $101...
Indian researchers have created strings of nanoparticles--called nano-necklaces--that can be programmed to deliver drugs to very specific targets in the body via chemical propulsion.
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