Category:

1. Johnson & Johnson
2. Pfizer
3. Novartis
4. Merck & Co.
5. Roche Holding
6. Sanofi
7. Bayer
8. GlaxoSmithKline
9. Amgen
10. McKesson
11. Gilead Sciences
12. Teva Pharmaceuticals Inds.
13. AstraZeneca
14. Abbott Laboratories
15. Eli Lilly & Co.

Swiss drugmaker Novartis will invest up to an extra $15 million in Gamida Cell, an Israeli developer of stem cell therapies…Novartis last year invested $35 million in the company for a 15 percent stake…$15 million investment will be used to advance Gamida Cell's clinical programs, including the development of NiCord, an experimental treatment for patients with high risk hematological malignancies, or blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma and sickle cell disease…Gamida plans to initiate a Phase III clinical trial with NiCord in mid-2016.

Pfizer is targeting a deadly bacterium that thrives in hospitals…Staphylococcus aureus can strike healthy, young people with no known risk factors, survive a barrage of antibiotics, and sometimes be fatal…One antibiotic-resistant strain frequently found in hospitals (MRSA) is responsible for about 75,000 serious infections and 10,000 deaths…a year…The pharmaceutical giant has spent more than 15 years working on a vaccine…and is in the midst of testing it on patients…Staph is a very difficult organism to make a vaccine against...Pfizer’s researchers are trying a multipronged approach. Two of the vaccine’s components go after a capsule that cloaks the bacterium and prevents the immune system from recognizing it. Another deprives the organism of manganese…A fourth targets the mechanism staph uses to lodge itself in the body…

..Hong Kong’s Nathan Road is a favorite destination for tourists from the mainland…Small, rainbow-lit drugstores have become a feature of some of Hong Kong’s most expensive neighborhoods…Their lineups include muscle rubs, painkillers, aphrodisiacs, and traditional Chinese medicines...if you ask discreetly, some will also sell you something else: cancer and hepatitis C drugs...Visitors from the mainland also prefer to buy their medicine in Hong Kong because they believe it’s less likely to be counterfeit…Cancer rates in China are soaring…Most Chinese lack prescription drug benefits and must pay out of pocket for premium medicines. The upshot: Prices for treatments from foreign drugmakers are some of the highest in the world…90 percent of cancer drug sales at pharmacies are to mainland tourists...

Eli Lilly's plans to discontinue development of a cholesterol drug is likely to have ramifications that stretch beyond…to include several of its competitors, as well…Lilly shares dropped…after it said that its drug evacetrapib, one of a class of cholesterol drugs known as CETP inhibitors, showed a lack of effectiveness in clinical testing. Shares of Merck, another company that's developing a CETP cholesterol treatment, were also lower…"The fact that Lilly's drug today failed essentially on an efficacy issue suggests that the CETP class overall are not going to deliver the benefit…from an efficacy standpoint,"…"PCSK9 inhibitors are much more likely to generate much more upside."

U.S. prices for the world's 20 top-selling medicines are…three times higher than in Britain… Researchers…also found U.S. prices were consistently higher than in other European markets…The United States, which leaves pricing to market competition, has higher drug prices than other countries where governments directly or indirectly control medicine costs…That makes it by far the most profitable market for pharmaceutical companies, leading to complaints that Americans are effectively subsidizing health systems elsewhere…Manufacturers say decent returns are needed to reward high-risk research…also point to higher U.S. survival rates for diseases such as cancer and the availability of industry-backed access schemes for poorer citizens…Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America says international comparisons are misleading because list prices do not take into account discounts available as a result of "aggressive negotiation" by U.S. insurers.

Ever since the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of ...OxyContin for certain children…it has faced unabated criticism from lawmakers and public officials who are wrestling with devastating rates of prescription opioid abuse in their communities…. The crux of the issue is whether the agency’s approval will lead to more prescriptions for OxyContin in young patients. For years, the powerful long-acting drug has been prescribed off-label to…children in severe pain… agency’s approval means those doctors will finally have "information about how to do it appropriately," like dosage recommendations…"This approval allows Purdue Pharma to market and promote this product for use in children, and the obvious concern is this approval will change the pattern of use.".. postmarketing data could prove revelatory and useful..."It’s not a given, but it could help us better address the problem of prescription drug abuse in adolescents....

As much as the chain drug industry has consolidated, there is room for more mergers and acquisitions. That’s evident from the M&A speculation swirling about the sector in the U.S. and Canada...I believe that the American markets will go through a substantial wave of consolidation horizontally and vertically…we want to be part of this, at the right time with the right partner. We are open to any kind of combination which could improve the value of our company, and we are looking actively around us to understand which is the best option for us.

California Governor…Brown…signed a bill that sets the strictest government standards in the United States for the use of antibiotics in livestock production…. comes amid growing concern that the overuse of such drugs is contributing to rising numbers of life-threatening human infections from antibiotic-resistant bacteria known as "superbugs."… Veterinary use of antibiotics is legal…consumer advocates, public health experts and investors have become more critical of the practice of routinely feeding antibiotics to chickens, cattle and pigs…The bill…will restrict the regular use of antibiotics for disease prevention and bans antibiotic use to fatten up animals…aims to stop over-the-counter sale of antibiotics for livestock use…antibiotics would have to be ordered by a licensed veterinarian…California's Department of Food and Agriculture will be required to monitor antibiotic sales and use.

The government and private insurers have been trying for years to move away from the fee-for-service system that pays doctors and hospitals based on the volume of tests they perform and treatments they prescribe. They want to replace it with contracts that reward quality and better outcomes… changes in the reimbursement model are rippling out to manufacturers of drugs and devices…shift could help address a long-standing problem with medical advances:..benefits observed in carefully designed clinical trials don’t always materialize when a treatment is deployed in the real world…linking payment to performance, while appealing in theory, is tricky. "What metric are you going to select to measure performance?