Sector: Pharmaceuticals Biotechnology and Life Sciences

Swiss drugmaker Roche said it would not extend its tender offer for U.S. genetics specialist Illumina on Wednesday, adding that an offer above $51 per share would not be in the interests of Roche shareholders.

Johnson & Johnson said Tuesday that first-quarter profit jumped 12.5 percent as lower spending on research, sales and administration more than made up for a slight decrease in sales due to generic competition.

Investors are suddenly hot for biotechnology, and that helps Celgene, CEO Robert Hugin told CNBC Thursday.

Sanofi-Aventis has been quick to move before its patents on bestselling products expired, said CEO Chris Viehbacher.

The Food and Drug Administration informed Vivus that it will decide whether to approve Qnexa by July 17 as it needs more time to review the company's risk evaluation plan for the drug.

New research from Citigroup adds another specter to the list: the U.S. health care industry. Two economists at the bank note that “functioning market price competition barely exists” in the health-care industry, whose per-capita spending is now nearly twice that, on average, of other developed nations.

A former researcher at Amgen has found that many basic studies on cancer -- a high proportion of them from university labs — are unreliable, with grim consequences for producing new medicines in the future.

Shares of Amylin Pharmaceuticals rose as much as 51 percent on Wednesday after the company rejected a $3.5 billion unsolicited takeover bid from Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Monthly injections of an experimental drug from Amgen slashed levels of cholesterol by up to an additional 66 percent in patients already taking statins, researchers said on Sunday.

Watson Pharmaceuticals is close to buying Swiss-based Actavis for around $7 billion, marking the latest deal between generics companies seeking improved economies of scale, three sources familiar with the matter said.

India’s mass production of generic versions of drugs patented elsewhere helps poor people with treatment that would otherwise be too costly, but drug companies say the knockoffs stifle innovation. The New York Times reports.

Merck said Tuesday first-quarter earnings would fall below Wall Street's estimates, however, it still expects to reach its earnings forecast for the full year.

Despite the lingering debt crisis and an incubating recession in many nations of the European Union, many global companies say they are maintaining or even increasing their investments in the euro zone and elsewhere on the Continent. The NYT reports.

U.S. health regulators are adding warnings to the labels of widely used cholesterol lowering drugs, such as Lipitor, to say they may raise levels of blood sugar and could cause memory loss.

Generic drugs are in focus at Generic Pharmaceutical Association's annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. The hot button issue: backlog of generic drug applications at the Food & Drug Administration.