Jun/19/2008 05:35
Pfizer managed to
add another $5 billion to their bottom line yesterday
by announcing that they have reached agreement with a
generic company to end litigation over patent
disputes. The agreement still has to be reviewed by
the the FTC which has taken a hard look at anything
involving drug companies but if it stands Lipitor
will not be generic here in the US until 2011.
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Jun/15/2008 12:20
When the model is
broken fix it ! When you can’t fix it and the pieces
don’t fit together anymore look to the outside for
new pieces. If you go to the DTC conventions and
seminars you are sure to see a lot of new faces
because pharma feels that in order to be good
marketers people need to spend time in sales or other
functions. This outdated six-sigma process is due to
the belief that marketing is a process not an art and
thus you have the problem at hand.
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Jun/05/2008 04:20
From the Pfizer
round-table on Chantix comes this quote “real-world,
post-market reports aren’t the gold standard of
clinical research and shouldn’t be interpreted as
such”. If you think that is puzzling than the
acknowledgement by Joe Feczko, Pfizer’s chief medical
officer, that the suicide issue appeared largely in
the spontaneous reports that trickle in from the real
world as opposed to in clinical tests will definitely
make you scratch your head. Read
More...
May/31/2008 11:29
Get ready for
another DTC advertising battle. This one will be over
two fronts; osteoporosis and breast cancer. Evista
started their campaign a lille while ago and out of
ASCO this week comes news that Zometa helps fight
breast cancer from spreading. With so many women
unaware of the risks of osteoporosis and a lot of
market share to be won you can bet this battle is
going to heat up and heat up very quickly.
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May/11/2008 08:06
From
this weeks Business Week
Magazine:
On
a rainy Friday in early May, two scientists from
vastly different worlds met at a bar near Boston's
Fenway Park to talk business. One was Dr. Stephen
Friend, a top cancer executive at struggling
drugmaker Merck. The other was Dr. Ronald DePinho, a
professor of medicine at Harvard University. The
topic: a new alliance Merck and Harvard have formed
in the war against cancer. This is nothing like past
partnerships between industry and academia, in which
drugmakers helped fund discoveries at the university
but relied on their own teams to come up with
commercial products. In this case, Merck expects its
Harvard allies to stay involved throughout the drug
development process. "We're creating a larger
discovery enterprise," says DePinho.
Read
More...
May/02/2008 06:49
Perhaps no industry
is facing as many challenges as the pharmaceutical
industry right now. The combination of blockbusters
coming off patent, record increases in healthcare
costs as more boomers retire and increased FDA
scrutinization of drugs is leading to an environment
that is hostile. Yet this author believes that the
change in the business environment will make
companies stronger and better positioned to compete
in the future. Read
More...
May/01/2008 05:42
When it comes to
business you have two options: change or perish.
Pfizer, with the failure of a successor for Lipitor,
is streamlining management and reducing bureaucracy
to be more competitive. GSK has hired an ex-Lilly
executive to manager their European operations and is
also reducing the layers of management. In the end
these changes will make pharma more competitive but
in addition to organizational changes they need to
focus more on patients and less on Wall
Street. Read
More...
Apr/16/2008 05:41
How can people make
such dumb decisions? The latest award for stupidity
goes to Merck who wrote drug studies and then put
prestigious physician names on the research reports.
Forget the stupidity of the issue shouldn't someone's
ethics alarm have gone off? Another reason why the
pharmaceutical industry should not be subject to
exclusion of litigation via FDA approval.
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Apr/10/2008 05:46
Part of the skills
senior executives need today is the ability to ensure
that their company can change to leverage new
opportunities and defend against threats to business.
With the revolving door in the CEO's office at big
pharma it seems that this has been one area where
pharma has really missed the boat and let down
shareholders and employees alike. Read
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Apr/06/2008 08:33
Want to really get
sick? Take a look at the
compensation of some selected
health care and pharma companies here. Millions
and Millions of dollars for CEO's who have
performed well and millions for CEO's who have not
performed so well. Read
More...
Apr/04/2008 08:38
In
talking with several people this week, who decided to
leave the pharma industry, it came as quite a
surprise to me to learn that the reasons most are
leaving is because "the party is over". They talk of
the days within the pharma industry when bonuses were
as high as 250% and there were half days on summer
Fridays. Well welcome to the new economy and
unfortunately those days are gone forever.
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Apr/03/2008 05:16
Schering-Plough said
yesterday that about 5,500 employees, or 10% of the
company's 55,000 headcount, have got to go. This
comes after Wyeth is going to cut 1,200 jobs and an
early indication from people who I have talked to at
agencies indicate that DTC budgets are being cut to
the extreme forcing some agencies to also start
downsizing. So when management screws up and CEO's
continue to rake in millions of dollars in perks and
salary the people lower on the totem pole are shown
the door.
Read More...
Apr/01/2008 05:53
While the makers of
Vytorin were trying to bail water from a massive leak
the makers of Crestor were putting a halt on clinical
trials because the news was too good not to share.
AstraZeneca PLC said Monday it is stopping a clinical
study of blockbuster drug Crestor early because the
cholesterol-lowering pill showed clear benefits over
a placebo. So it looks like the first line of
treatment could be generic statins, followed by
Lipitor and Crestor. Vytorin? Well the damage of
holding data is clearly done and it may never recover
enough to make a difference in the blockbuster
cholesterol market. Read
More...
Mar/31/2008 05:25
Leading doctors
urged a return to older, tried-and-true treatments
for high cholesterol after hearing full results of a
failed trial of Vytorin. “The strongest
recommendation we can make on this panel is to go
back to statins,” said Dr. Harlan M. Krumholz, a
cardiologist at Yale. “They work.” Well if the
current pharma holds true the next step if for SP to
start laying off sales people and for sales to
continue to sink like a stone in water.
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More...
On
a rainy Friday in early May, two scientists from
vastly different worlds met at a bar near Boston's
Fenway Park to talk business. One was Dr. Stephen
Friend, a top cancer executive at struggling
drugmaker Merck. The other was Dr. Ronald DePinho, a
professor of medicine at Harvard University. The
topic: a new alliance Merck and Harvard have formed
in the war against cancer. This is nothing like past
partnerships between industry and academia, in which
drugmakers helped fund discoveries at the university
but relied on their own teams to come up with
commercial products. In this case, Merck expects its
Harvard allies to stay involved throughout the drug
development process. "We're creating a larger
discovery enterprise," says DePinho.
Read
More...
