Regulators uphold one Viread patent; CEO says Stada not up for bid;

> The U.S. Patent Office has upheld one of four patents covering Gilead Sciences' anti-HIV med Viread; no ruling yet on the other three. Report

> German generics maker Stada is not for sale, its CEO says; last month, Novartis was rumored to be bidding for the company. Report

> The city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit Tuesday against McKesson, accusing the San Francisco pharmaceutical wholesale giant of conspiring to artificially inflate the prices of hundreds of brand-name drugs. Report

> Perrigo has inked a deal to develop generic drugs with Cobrek Pharmaceuticals, a privately owned company that specializes in the research and development of niche generic products. Report

> Teva Pharmaceutical Industries got the FDA nod for its version of fluoxetine capsules; it plans to ship immediately to take advantage of its 180-day exclusivity for the product, which is a copy of Eli Lilly's Sarafem. Release

> Every country's biotech industry is different. And E&Y notes that Canada in particular is "facing a real funding crisis," says Rod Budd, Ernst & Young's Canadian biotech industry leader. Report

> BioWorld examines a $430 million deal between Sweden's Medivir and Tibotec to develop new polymerase inhibitors. They'll jointly screen libraries for nucleoside analogues that show anti-HCV activity in vitro. Report

> Researchers for GlaxoSmithKline and Synta Pharmaceuticals say a mid-stage study of elesclomol produced "statistically significant" data on progression-free survival of patients with metastatic melanoma. Report

> The news that the FDA had put a 'clinical hold' on Geron's plans to launch the first U.S. clinical trial of a stem cell therapy is attracting considerable scrutiny from researchers. Geron report

> Twenty-five years after the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus, top scientists from around the world gathered at the Pasteur Institute to mark major advances in the field and come to terms with some of the grim realities that now afflict their work. Report

And Finally... The National Institutes of Health has created a new research program that is devoting itself to studying patients with mystery diseases. Report