Home » Generic and Specialty Pharmaceuticals (TRBC)
SHANGHAI China, already a global powerhouse in high-tech areas from solar panels to bullet trains, is turning its industrial might to the challenge of making more of its own drugs for a vast and aging population. Given the 10 years or more it typically takes t... More »
SAO PAULO The reliance of Brazil’s Grupo BTG Pactual SA on market funding may pose an immediate challenge for new boss Persio Arida, who sought to calm clients on Friday after its shares fell for a third straight day. The São Paulo-based investment bank tapped... More »
LONDON/NEW YORK/FRANKFURT Investment bank Lazard is working with Sanofi’s management to prepare a sale or listing of its Merial animal health unit, aiming to land the leading advisory job for the deal, which could value the business at up 12 billion euros ($12... More »
Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) secured formal board approval on Sunday for its acquisition of Botox maker Allergan Plc (AGN.N) for more than $150 billion, a deal that will create the world’s biggest drug maker, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal, the l... More »
Pfizer Inc’s (PFE.N) looming deal to buy Botox maker Allergan Plc (AGN.N) for more than $150 billion will cap a record-breaking run for mergers and acquisitions in the healthcare sector, taking the cumulative value of deals in 2015 to more than $600 billion. H... More »
Novartis AG said on Friday it received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regular approval for a drug combination to treat an aggressive form of skin cancer. The FDA approved Tafinlar and Mekinist for treatment of metastatic melanoma based on two years ov... More »
NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES In recent days, the largest U.S. managers of private prescription drug benefits have cut off at least eight pharmacies that work closely with drugmakers, intensifying scrutiny of a system that helps inflate drug prices, officials at the be... More »
Merck & Co’s drug to reverse the effects of muscle relaxants used in surgery is safe and effective enough to warrant approval, an independent panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said. The drug, which goes by the chemical name of sugammadex, has repe... More »
LONDON Three of Europe’s top drugmakers – GlaxoSmithKline, Roche and Sanofi – face health checks this week at high-profile presentations designed to show they can overcome looming market threats. The unusual confluence of investor days comes at a testing time ... More »
LONDON, Anyone who goes down with flu in Europe this winter could be asked to enroll in a randomized clinical trial in which they will either be given a drug, which may or may not work, or standard advice to take bed rest and paracetamol. Those who agree could... More »
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it approved Johnson & Johnson’s chemotherapy to treat specific soft-tissue sarcomas (STS) that have spread to other parts of the body or cannot be removed by surgery. The drug, Yondelis, is designed to delay the progr... More »
An independent panel of advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday voted 10-4 in favor of approving AstraZeneca Plc’s gout drug. All 10 who backed the drug, lesinurad, qualified their vote by urging the FDA to ask AstraZeneca for studies after... More »
CHICAGO Cancer researchers are just beginning to understand the ramifications of the fundamental discoveries behind the 2015 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, which were awarded on Wednesday to three scientists for explaining how cells repair mistakes in DNA that occ... More »
ATLANTA A dozen Pacific nations closed in on a sweeping free-trade pact on Sunday in Atlanta but failed to finalize terms on the fifth day of round-the-clock talks, dashing hopes raised by an earlier breakthrough on protections for new biotech drugs. U.S. offi... More »
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Merck & Co Inc’s immunotherapy, Keytruda, for patients with the most common form of lung cancer whose tumors produce a specific biological marker. The FDA approval for Keytruda in advanced non-small cell... More »
Switzerland’s Roche has a potential new multi-billion-dollar drug to help it diversify beyond cancer treatments following the success of ocrelizumab against a hard-to-treat type of multiple sclerosis. The injectable antibody medicine is the first product to sh... More »
COPENHAGEN Shares in Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO) rose as much as 5 percent on Monday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the diabetes drug Tresiba, allowing the Danish drugmaker to prepare its largest ever drug launch. The FDA’s decision lat... More »
PARIS French drugmaker Sanofi said the European Commission had cleared its key cholesterol drug Praluent for the treatment of so-called “bad cholesterol,” or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, in certain adult patients with hypercholesterolemia. The dr... More »
ZURICH Roche ‘s new immune-system boosting cancer drug has given positive results in tests on patients suffering from some lung and bladder cancers, according to data released on Sunday at the European Cancer Congress in Vienna that the company hopes will help... More »
MUMBAI The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has revoked an approval issued in March to India’s Sun Pharma Advanced Research Company Ltd (SPARC) to launch a drug for seizures, citing manufacturing quality problems at its production site. The move comes as a se... More »
The first electronic automatic injector to deliver a drug for the most common form of multiple sclerosis received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday. The injection delivers Betaseron, a disease-modifying drug approved 22 years ago by... More »
An experimental antibody developed by Merck & Co Inc was shown in pivotal studies to reduce by about 10 percentage points the risk that infection with Clostridium difficile bacterium, which can cause a deadly diarrhea, will recur. In the United States, C. diff... More »
PARIS Sanofi said on Monday a second late-stage Phase III study of its LixiLan diabetes drug had met its main target, readying it for regulatory submissions by the fourth quarter in the United States and the first quarter of next year in the European Union. Li... More »
A new Novartis AG drug to treat heart failure should cost 17 percent less than its list price of $4,560 per year to keep health costs in line with growth in the overall U.S. economy, according to the nonprofit ICER. In a draft report released on Friday, the Bo... More »
LONDON Pfizer’s stop-smoking drug Chantix does not raise risks of heart attack or depression, contrary to previous reports, and should be recommended to more smokers wanting to quit, scientists said on Monday. In a study tracking 150,000 smokers in England for... More »
ZURICH Novartis plans the first human tests next year of a “smart” contact lens it is developing with Google designed to help restore the eye’s natural autofocus. “This project is progressing well,” Novartis Chief Executive Joe Jimenez told Swiss newspaper Le ... More »
Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline temporarily closed a North Carolina factory on Tuesday after testing at a cooling tower found bacteria that causes deadly Legionnaire’s disease. The Legionella bacteria were discovered during routine inspections at the site in Zebulon... More »
Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline closed its North Carolina factory on Tuesday after testing at a cooling tower found bacteria that causes deadly Legionnaire’s disease, a company spokeswoman said. The Legionella bacteria was discovered during routine inspections at th... More »
BOSTON Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, one of the world’s most influential gold investors, said on Friday that the metal is now at an appropriate price level, following last week’s rout that dragged prices to five-year lows. Paulson, in his first ... More »
LONDON/GENEVA The world is on the verge of being able to protect humans against Ebola, the World Health Organization said on Friday, as a trial in Guinea found a vaccine to have been 100 percent effective. Initial results from the trial, which tested Merck... More »
LONDON Gene therapy for deafness is moving closer to reality, with new research on Wednesday showing the technique for fixing faulty DNA can improve responses in mice with genetic hearing loss. Separately, a clinical trial backed by Novartis is under way to he... More »
LONDON Scientists have identified a key gene used by poppies to make morphine, paving the way for better methods of producing the medically important drug, potentially without the need for cultivating poppy fields. The latest finding follows recent success in ... More »
