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DO AS WE SAY, NOT AS WE DO
NINE OUT OF 10 DOCTORS believe they have an obligation to report incompetence on the part of a colleague, but only half the doctors who express that opinion are actually prepared to do so, according to survey data published last week in the Annals of In-ternal Medicine. The statistics are based on responses from around 1,500 stateside physicians, who received a $20 honorarium along with the survey form. Twenty-one doctors pocketed the dough with-out completing the questionnaire, which demonstrates competence of an entirely different sort.
PROMISE US YOU’LL TAKE THE ELEVATOR, JIM
RECORD THIS DATE: Wednesday, December 5, 2007 was the day the pharmaceutical industry died. First you had Bristol-Myers Squibb kingpin Jim Cornelius explaining that BMS doesn’t want to be considered a drug company any more—well, who would?—and that he’d just as soon be called “a next-generation BioPharma company.” Never mind the context, which was the BMS boss describing how he plans to spend the next three years firing 10 per cent of his workers, shuttering half his manufacturing plants, shucking most of his mature brands, and possibly auctioning off his wound-care and diagnostics units. The take-away message was that nobody, not even the very company that already divested its legacy side-lines such as Clairol and Bufferin in order to focus on pharma, wants to be considered as being in the pharma business anymore. Tack on the modifier “bio,” if you must, only please don’t think of us as Big Pharma. Or, as that comedian used to tell Johnny Carson, “You can call me Ray-Jay, or you can call me R.J.” The morning after the BMS announcement, the Wall Street Journal made this proclamation on its front page: “Over the next few years, the pharmaceutical business will hit a wall.” And there, in the business newspaper-of-record’s narrow columns, was the essential fact that half the industry’s combined 2007 stateside revenues will vanish before 2012, as patents expire on $67 billion worth of blockbusters. Moreover, pipelines won’t make up the difference. Underlining the grim data was the comment of Eli Lilly helmer Sidney Taurel, who offered: “I think the industry is doomed if we don’t change.” The Journal says the drugbiz can expect these developments: more emphasis on biotech, more outsourcing, more effort by branded drugmakers to retain revenue from generics following patent expiries, and, lastly, more diversification. The final plank seems counter to what Jim Cornelius was proposing last week, but Corny’s nonetheless got the cost-reduction stuff down pat. He tells the newspaper he’s looking at CMOs in India, China and eastern Europe, concluding, “I’m talking to you from the 44th floor of an office on Park Avenue [in Manhattan.] A year from now, I won’t be talking to you from the 44th floor, because we’re going to move downstairs out of these very expensive off-ices.” Down among the little people, it just won’t be the same Big Pharma. Abbott Laboratories reduced its headcount by 1,200 last week, shedding workers at plants in Ireland and California that produced Rx-eluting stents.
QUEBEC Rx NOTES
AMBRILIA BIOPHARMA, a Montreal developer of viral disease and Ca Txs, last week tapped Philippe Calais as CEO and prexy. He spent five years as global business prexy of Laval, Que.-based Neurochem, and was gee-em of Servier Canada. Says he: “I look forward to working with Ambrilia’s licensing partners, Merck, Mallinckrodt [and] Teva.” Elsewhere, Mistral Pharma, the Montreal-area Rx developer, last week said a pharmacokinetic study on rheumatology Tx candidate MIST-B04 suggested the Rx may work with o.d. dosing, rather than t.i.d. The Rx uses the company’s proprietary Trizero delivery system.
FILINGS OF NOTE
INSITE VISION, the California ophthalmic Tx maker, last week filed an NDS with Health Canada seeking to market topical antibiotic azithromycin (AzaSite) as Tx for bacterial conjunctivitis. Says InSite helmer S. Kumar Chandrasekaran: “Canada is the first country outside the United States where InSite has filed for the regulatory approval of AzaSite.” John-son & Johnson’s Janssen-Cilag and Centocor units last week filed NDAs stateside and in the EU for ustekinumab, candidate for chronic moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis Tx in adults. Ustekinumab targets interleukin-12 and interleukin-23.
BUDDY DEALS
PFIZER last week inked a pact with Pennsylvannia bio-techie Adolor for analgesic candidates ADL5859 and ADL5747, which could potentially be worth $232.5 million. The compounds are in mid- and early-stage development, respectively, for inflammatory, neuropathic and acute pain. Adolor is also noodling out Entereg, a post-surgical analgesic with GlaxoSmithKline.
PIPELINE PROGRESS
WHAT DO YOU GET for $15.6 billion these days? AstraZeneca, which paid that amount to acquire MedImmune six months ago, says its purchase of the Maryland biotechie will yield three new Rx candidates within three years, and an average of six NDAs annually. Says MedImmune boss David Mott: “Our biologics pipeline now has more than doubled in size to contain 100 research projects and more than a dozen clinical product candidates. Meanwhile, Novartis Ca boss David Epstein says four of his new oncology Txs should receive regulatory approval within four years: lymphoma candidate RAD001, lung Ca Tx ASA404, brain Ca Tx SOM230, and lymphoma Tx LBH589. Epstein says at least one of the four will achieve blockbuster status. In an un-related development, Novartis declined to comment on rumors that the company would acquire Spanish biotechie Zeltia. A Zeltia spokesman said they had “no knowledge” of a takeover.
READER CONTEST #17-B RESULTS
WE WERE FRANKLY DISAPPOINTED by readers’ not-quite-effervescent response to our invitation to submit slogans for Steelback beer, the beverage brand now run by the Sherman family of Apotex fame. Amid a two-four of flat entries, we’re awarding the competition to Darren Stallman of Toronto’s Cundari Health advertising agency, even though, frankly, we’re pretty sure it doesn’t represent his shop’s very best work. His submission: “Steelback: The Beer With P.I.” You can just imagine what the other slogans were like. We selected Mr. Stallman’s offering because it seemed to imply the product’s diuretic benefit, without specifically stating such. If that’s in fact what he was attempting, we applaud his daring spirit, as would Mr. Sherman, no doubt. And if that’s not what Mr. Stallman was attempting, we’ll just send along his prize by Canada Post, and he can continue the creative process uninterrupted.
(c) 2007 Chronicle Information Resources Ltd. Not for redistribution.
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