Celebrex

Pfizer reaches $894M painkiller settlement

Tracy Staton — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:04:03 -0400

Pfizer can now say "done deal" on most of the lawsuits over its painkillers Celebrex and Bextra. The cost? $894 million. As of today, the drugmaker has reached agreements in principle to settle with up to 92 percent of the outstanding personal injury plaintiffs, who had alleged that the drugs had caused heart attacks, strokes, or other serious health problems. And Pfizer hopes to extend the deal to include many of the remaining plaintiffs, too. The company will fight any leftover claims in court.

Pfizer General Counsel Amy Schulman (photo) told the New York Times that two court rulings had paved the way for the settlement deal. Judges in New York and California decided that there was not enough evidence that the most common dose of Celebrex and Bextra-- which is no longer on the market--boosted risks of heart attack and stroke.

Also included in the proposed deal are suits from insurers and patients who want to recoup their spending on the two painkillers, plus claims of improper Bextra marketing in 33 states and the District of Columbia. Some $89 million would go to settle the reimbursement claims and $60 million to settle state claims. The remaining $745 million would go to the personal injury plaintiffs.

- check out the Pfizer release
- read the story in the New York Times

Hassan to testify in Celebrex suit

Tracy Staton — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:48:37 -0400

Schering-Plough CEO Fred Hassan has been ordered to testify via videotape in a trial over the painkiller Celebrex, which Pfizer acquired in its merger with Pharmacia--the company that was headed up by Hassan when Celebrex was launched. Though Pfizer has settled some Celebrex lawsuits, brought by plaintiffs who said the painkiller caused their heart attacks or strokes, this is the first such suit to reach trial. Report

Erbitux, KRAS gene star at ASCO

Tracy Staton — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:26:14 -0400

As expected, headlines have been spewing from the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting like ash from a volcano. And as promised, we bring you a roundup of the latest and greatest on using existing drugs against cancer. Here goes:

A growing body of evidence suggests that patients with a non-mutant form of the KRAS gene respond better to EGFR inhibitors such as ImClone's Erbitux and Amgen's Vectibix; you can get a link to the 300-odd KRAS hits from an ASCO search at the WSJ Health Blog. (By the way, just yesterday, the E.U.'s drug regulators recommended approval for Erbitux as a first-line colon cancer treatment--but only for those with the non-mutated KRAS gene.)
The Novartis bone drug Zometa surprised folks by helping prevent a recurrence of breast cancer--and not just in cutting spread of the cancer to the bones. Among those who took the drug in addition to chemo, 6 percent died or had a recurrence within five years of treatment, compared with 9 percent who got chemo alone.
A high dose of Pfizer's painkiller Celebrex may help keep smokers from developing lung cancer; Celebrex blocks the COX-2 enzyme that causes inflammation, which besides causing arthritis pain, has also been linked with cancer. Researchers said the findings need to be confirmed with other studies.
Despite all the good news on Erbitux at the meeting, analysts said they don't think growth in that drug will necessarily take away from Genentech's Avastin, which is already entrenched as a first-line treatment. Among the patients most likely to jump at the prospect of Erbitux are lung cancer sufferers who can't take Avastin because of the risk of side effects.

Stay tuned: The meeting goes on through today, so we'll have more updates tomorrow.

- check out the Merck KGaA release
- see the Health Blog KRAS item
- find the WSJ post on Zometa
- read the Celebrex story in the Washington Post
- get the Avastin-Erbitux comparison in the New York Times

Painkillers little help against dementia

Tue, 13 May 2008 06:59:54 -0400

Hopes that painkillers might help stave off Alzheimer's disease were dampened by a large new study. Pfizer's Celebrex and the over-the-counter Aleve didn't benefit thinking skills as researchers had hypothesized. "These were not the results we were hoping for," one of the co-authors said. "We designed this study hoping we would see a protective effect of these drugs." They'll continue monitoring the participants to see if a delayed benefit crops up.

Previous studies had shown that people who took the drugs ran a lower risk of developing Alzheimer's, but those studies weren't designed specifically for that purpose. It's a bummer for Pfizer and Bayer (which makes Aleve), because proof of Alzheimer's prevention would translate into a big new use for those meds. "Unfortunately, as this paper demonstrates, research doesn't always translate into successful new treatments," a philosophical Dr. Gail Cawkwell of Pfizer told the LA Times.

- read the Times article

Pfizer starts settling Celebrex claims

Mon, 05 May 2008 06:59:58 -0400

Pfizer is starting to settle the thousands of lawsuits over painkillers Celebrex and Bextra, the Wall Street Journal reports. Three groups of plaintiffs who allege that the meds caused heart attacks and strokes--some 200 claimants in all--are involved in the tentative settlement deals. Just in time, too; the first Bextra trial was set to begin today, but was postponed to allow time for negotiations.

One lawyer said Pfizer had offered an average of $200,000 per client in Bextra cases and $40,000 to $50,000 on average for Celebrex claims. Pfizer lawyers have said that the company will pay up to $500 million to resolve all the cases. Pfizer hasn't yet commented on the settlement news.

Rather than coming up with a blanket deal like Merck did in with Vioxx litigation, Pfizer is said to be working out its Celebrex/Bextra cases on a law firm-by-law firm basis. (Of course, Merck started out defending its Vioxx claims on a case-by-case basis.) The three drugs are all Cox-2 inhibitors; Celebrex is the only one still sold in the U.S. The other two were taken off the market amid safety concerns.

- read the story in the Wall Street Journal
- see the WSJ Health Blog item