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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a call for universal health care on Monday, plunging back into a political battle she memorably waged and lost as first lady more than a decade ago.
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Right on the heels of my previous blog entry about an analyst saying a Medicare reconsideration of its anemia drug reimbursement policy may be in the offing comes this news out of the agency.
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The U.S. Medicare agency said Monday that, unless it receives new evidence, it will not reverse a decision to cut payments for certain uses of anemia drugs, including Amgen's Aranesp.
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After being down about half-a-dollar in early trading, volatile shares of Amgen are trimming their loses and heading back into positive territory at this writing. That turnaround could be from the dissemination of a research note from Wachovia biotech analyst George Farmer.
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It's relatively lightly traded and it's a very small market cap (under $500 million), but shares of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals are sitting at a new high in the early going today. The stock has had a very nice move since the end of June when it was trading for less than 10 bucks. Today, it's over $15.
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BioCryst Pharmaceuticals drew the short straw, er, needle. The biotech company says a majority of patients in a mid-stage clinical trial of its experimental seasonal and pandemic flu antiviral Peramivir got the drug using too short of an injection needle.
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Because it's so extraordinarily rare--if not unheard of--for one analyst to publish research specifically to refute another analyst I thought this is blogworthy. Last Friday, FBR biotech analyst Jim Reddoch told clients in a research note that he was downgrading ImClone Systems to Market Perform in the wake of the robust data released last week on Erbitux...
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Millennium Pharmaceuticals said on Tuesday initial results from a large trial of its cancer drug Velcade as an initial treatment for multiple myeloma were so good that the trial was stopped early to allow patients in the control group to receive the therapy.
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Hillary Clinton's new health plan is a sign of how the debate has shifted since 1993. It's universal -- the individual mandate she's called for would see to that--but less ambitious in design than the version that crashed and burned during her husband's presidency...
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Recently I blogged about the hiring of a new CEO at ImClone Systems and the unique clause in his contract requiring him to buy half-a-million dollars worth of stock in the company. My suspicion was that ImClone Chairman and billionaire shareholder Carl Icahn had a hand in that.
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French biopharmaceutical company Flamel Technologies said Wednesday it signed a development and license agreement with the pharmaceuticals unit of drug developer Wyeth.
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Yesterday, I blogged that messages to each of David Maris' lawyers seeking comment on Biovail "dropping" or "settling" its case against the former Bank of America Securities analyst had gone without a response. Well, this morning I got this email from one of his attorneys tossing the ball back in Biovail's court:
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A panel of advisers to U.S. health regulators voted on Tuesday to reject new restrictions on anemia drugs, a win for drugmakers Amgen and Johnson & Johnson .
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Is the Senate coming to the rescue of patients, investors or both? That's the question being raised after the passage of a non-binding resolution telling Medicare to "immediately reconsider" its new policy to cut anemia drug use and reimbursement. Analysts are stunned by the move.
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So, I thought I'd be spending today monitoring the webcast of the FDA Advisory Committees that are meeting to decide whether doctors should use less of the anemia drugs from Amgen and Johnson & Johnson to treat kidney dialysis patients.
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The New York Post broke the news today that Biovail Corporation, Canada's biggest biotech, is dropping its lawsuit against a hedge fund, a research outlet, Bank of America Securities and its former specialty pharmaceuticals analyst David Maris. "60 Minutes" did a piece on the lawsuits last year. Shortly after being sued, Maris left B of A. He and the company never disclosed..
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For some time now I've been occasionally blogging about the data on a once-a-week version of Byetta that are expected in the fourth quarter sometime. This is a long-acting release (LAR, for short) version of the current twice-a-day injectable drug for diabetes from Lilly and Amylinspacer. Alkermes makes the technology that extends the drug's release.
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U.S. health regulators charged Boston Scientific with inadequate record-keeping and reporting following the deaths of five patients implanted with an experimental device to treat a dangerous ballooning of the body's main artery.
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Highly publicized government warnings that antidepressants could cause suicidal thoughts in adolescents may have scared off parents and doctors alike, meaning fewer depressed children are being diagnosed, U.S. psychiatrists say.
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Call it a stellar, mythic merger. This morning Isis Pharmaceuticals (named after the goddess in Egyptian mythology) and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (named after the center star in Orion's belt) announced they're forming a joint venture called Regulus Therapeutics, LLC (named after the brightest star in the constellation Leo). I'm sensing a theme here.