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…executives at both Pfizer and Allergan acknowledged that they have begun merger talks. Pfizer’s goal in such a move is pretty simple – to finally achieve the tax-saving corporate inversion it has been seeking for some time. This move would enable Pfizer to become an Ireland-based company, thereby substantially lowering its corporate tax rate… speculations are being made as to what such a new organization would look like, and some have expressed concerns over the impact of yet another merger on Pfizer’s R&D organization… R&D folks, meanwhile, are polishing up their resumes in anticipation of mass firings...However, this Allergan deal is unlike the others… there is little evidence that there is a lot of overlap from an R&D perspective between Pfizer and Allergan. If anything, one wonders if Pfizer will retain Allergan research efforts…

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.

California wants to cap drug prices, but Big Pharma isn't having it. Amid a growing backlash over drug pricing, companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Bristol-Myers Squibb are funneling millions of dollars into stamping out a new proposal that would curb drug spending in the state…other companies including Pfizer, Eisai, Purdue Pharma, The Medicines Co., Sunovion Pharmaceuticals and Daiichi Sankyo contributed to a fund that would quash a state ballot initiative…The initiative, dubbed the California Drug Price Relief Act, would only allow government health programs to strike contracts with drugmakers at prices that are the same or lower than those paid by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which usually gets steep discounts on meds from manufacturers…

Biotech stocks closed out their worst week in four years after Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton vowed to address 'price gouging'…Among the worst performers in trading Friday, Gilead Sciences, Pfizer, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, and Celgene were all sharply lower.

Pfizer CEO Ian Read says he's met the drug-cost enemy, and it isn't pharma. The firestorm over U.S. drug pricing isn't a problem for drugmakers to solve…The public debate about rising drug prices--be they increases for existing meds or 6-figure cancer-treatment costs--overlooks the financial benefits of drug treatment...Read cites cost-benefit analyses showing that Lipitor and other statin meds cost $305 billion between 1987 and 2008, but they generated $1.3 trillion in economic benefits, by preventing heart attacks and strokes, and their costs to the healthcare system.

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…

Pharma and biotech firms not using ‘green chemistry’ to make their products incur higher costs and risk losing market share… There is considerable drug industry interest in ‘green chemistry’ processes that improve efficiency and cut waste – at least that is according to the corporate social responsibility reports issued by firms like Pfizer, GSK and Roche…Whether these efforts are PR – so called greenwashing - or genuine is difficult to judge…while some drugmakers are investing to try and be environmentally-friendly others, particularly smaller biotechs, have yet to commit to greener manufacturing.

Indian regulators are privately pressuring major drug firms to better police how they sell popular codeine-based cough syrups to tackle smuggling and addiction, a move that is reducing supplies of a medicine doctors say is an effective treatment…India's Cipla stopped making the product last year owing to regulatory demands, and Abbott Laboratories and Pfizer have had to reduce batch sizes...Regulators want to make it easier for law enforcement agencies to track cough syrup abuse in the country and bottles smuggled to neighboring Bangladesh...Abuse is... common in Bangladesh. At a treatment center…tales abound of ruined careers and family struggles. A 40-year-old former banker at the Bangladesh Rehabilitation and Assistance Center for Addicts said his addiction was so bad he felt he loved cough syrup more than his four-year-old son.

In what has turned into a legal trifecta for Pfizer, it has won the dismissal of a lawsuit that claimed the use of the antidepressant Zoloft (sertraline) during pregnancy caused birth defects in a child. The decision comes after Pfizer has won two jury verdicts in recent months over the same claims… Philadelphia state court Judge Mark Bernstein…granted a summary judgment…to Pfizer and dismissed the case…The dismissal came as…Bernstein also denied a request by the plaintiffs to add to the testimony of their expert…there is insufficient epidemiological evidence to link the drug to birth defects...FDA recently asked Pfizer to add information about possible links to birth defects to the Zoloft label.

...cleanup of the former American Cyanamid drug manufacturing site in Bridgewater, NJ, has been ongoing for decades. But the EPA this week presented Pfizer with a bill for its share of the cost of cleaning up the superfund site…Justice Department said that the drugmaker has agreed to pay $194 million for the cleanup of 6 disposal areas at the 575-acre site. It will chip in an additional $1 million to reimburse the EPA for costs the agency has already paid out for overseeing cleanup work at the 100-year-old site.