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POPSThe Latest Conflicted Researcher Sen. Charles Grassley has been digging up a lot of these. Gardiner Harris at NYT really manages to pull out some of the larger trends at work, especially toward the end of this piece.
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POPSIcahn Wins? Bristol Bids For ImClone The market is already valuing ImClone at above the offer price. But why would the bid price go up? Who would want to own a share of a drug that Bristol already essentially controls?
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POPSBiogen Unbought Shares in Biogen Idec are down 27% after hours after the company announced that it did not find a buyer. Why would any big pharmaceutical firm would purchase it at this inflated price. The record of big pharmaceutical and biotech mergers is spotty at best.
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POPSWeak Knees On Avandia The nuclear receptors triggered by Avandia and Actos, are really complicated, and lots of drugs that hit them have been non-starters because of side effects. Derek Lowe, a pharmaceutical chemist, takes a look at the latest worrisome result in mice -- by PPAR guru Ron Evans -- on his blog.
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POPSTheravance Antibiotic Data: Looks Good These data look pretty good. Televancin met its main goal of being statistically the same as vancomycin, the standard of care, in ventilator pneumonia. This is a pretty tough illness for a new drug. It's a good sign that the cure rate comes in numerically higher for televancin, although I'd quibble with the quote in the press release from Ralph Corey of Duke University. Saying a difference is clinically meaningful when it's not statistically significant is a little misleading. We don't know for sure the difference isn't due to the play of chance. However, in a secondary analysis, televancin did beat vancomycin. That could encourage doctors to use this drug. Definately one to watch. Shares leapt 8% in aftermarket trading.
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POPSFDA Panel Pans Avastin The panel voted by a margin of one vote that the FDA should not approve Genentech's Avastin as a treatment for breast cancer. This is bad for Genentech, but it also likely to hurt the stocks of biotechnology companies in general. This decision reinforces the view that the FDA is getting tougher in approving new drugs. Every medicine has risks and benefits, but many in the drug industry complain that the risks are starting to weigh more heavily in that equation than they did before. This has more symbolic weight because Genentech is often seen as biotech's standard bearer, and because Avastin is one of the first targeted therapeutics. Of course, the drug is still on the market saving lives -- this decision applies only to the question of whether or not Genentech can market Avastin as a breast cancer treatment. The final word will rest with the FDA early next year.
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POPSMulling Over Bristol's Cuts Bristol-Myers is cutting its work force by 10% and manufacturing by 50%, and its talking about selling off businesses including its nutrition unit and medical imaging business. Generally these are seen as good moves, but buying and selling non-core businesses isn't what makes pharmaceutical stocks move. Last time Bristol did a bunch of spinning off and purchasing was at the nadir of the tenure of its previous chief executive, Peter Dolan. The real question is whether the pipeline of new medicines Bristol is touting can deliver, not what it can do to control costs.
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POPSMerck's Big Risk: High Expectations So much has gone so right for so long. Merck has executed well, but it has also gotten very lucky. For instance, its diabetes pill Januvia would not be such a big product were it not for both the safety problems plaguing GlaxoSmithKline's Avandia and the regulatory delay of Novartis' Galvus. Earnings forecasts have just kept going up. Should investors start to feel cautious? Or can Merck really keep delivering when other drug stocks are not?
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POPSWhy The AIDS Vaccine Quest Must Go On As World AIDS Day approaches, Arthur Caplan, the University of Pennsylvania bioethicist, takes a look at the fallout from Merck's experimental HIV vaccine. The vaccine, for unknown reasons, actually made patients more likely to contract the virus. But Caplan says stopping the search for an AIDS vaccine would be a giant mistake.
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POPSSepracor Cuts Jobs, Shares Rise 13% New chief executive Adrian Adams, who previously led Kos Pharmaceuticals and was at Novartis before that, makes cutting costs a key part of his plan for the maker of the sleeping pill Lunesta. Adams said in a statement:“We are looking forward to the next phase of growth for Sepracor, a phase during which we intend not only to improve cost structures, but also more fully leverage our product franchises, grow and differentiate our research and development pipeline and aggressively pursue synergistic corporate development and licensing opportunities.”
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POPSASCO Opens Up It's about time. The annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology is the most important of the year for biotech stocks, but it has been the worst in terms of how it handles information of importance to investors. TheStreet.com's Adam Feurstein, who has done a lot to bring attention to this problem, has the scoop.
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POPSA Golden Age Of Vaccines? My colleague Robert Langreth has a fantastic story about the cutting edge of vaccine development, including this striking story of a researcher who volunteered to be part of a test for a new malaria vaccine.
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POPSCelgene Plunges It's been a tough quarter for biotechnology companies, with several delivering lackluster results. This may be the biggest surprise, though, because Celgene has been a machine for the past couple years based on its anti-cancer medicines.
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POPSApplied Biosystems Launches New Sequencer New, high-speed gene sequencers are likely to change the way biology is studied. This ABI machine will compete with the sequencers made by 454 Life Sciences, now a unit of Roche, and Illumina's Solexa sequencers. Among new sequencer-makers, Helicos appears to be the upstart to watch.
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POPSBiogen Idec For Sale What's interesting here is that Biogen Idec's stock has been on a tear, and the company is predict blowout sales for its other MS drug, Tysabri. So why sell? Just because someone like Pfizer might be forced to pay a large premium?
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