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Sebelius on Vaccines

24 Nov 2009

Discussing whether a new $487M investment from the government will help speed up the production of the most important vaccines, with Kathy Sebelius, Health & Human Services secretary and CNBC's Mike Huckman.

The New Formula for Faster Vaccines

24 Nov 2009

Novartis is opening on Tuesday the country's first plant to produce flu vaccines using cell cultures. These vaccines are faster, better and cheaper to make than egg-based methods, reports CNBC's Mike Huckman.

Novartis Opens 1st US Plant for Flu Vaccine

24 Nov 2009

Cholesterol Drug Battle: Niaspan vs. Zetia 16 Nov 2009
Abbott Laboratories' Niaspan beat Merck's Zetia in a new study. CNBC's Mike Huckman has the details.

Cardiologist Grades Cholesterol Drug Study

16 Nov 2009

Abbott Laboratories' Niaspan beat Merck's Zetia in a new study. Dr. Steven Nissen, chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at The Cleveland Clinic, shares his reaction with CNBC's Mike Huckman.

Merck's Cholesterol Drugs Under Pressure

16 Nov 2009

A new study is putting Merck's cholesterol drugs under pressure today, reports CNBC's Mike Huckman, with Ken Frazier, Merck Global Human Health president.

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CNBC ON DIGG

No ASCO Fiasco!

Published: Monday, 1 Jun 2009 | 1:58 PM ET

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By: Mike Huckman
Reporter

I'm happy to report that I'm scribbling out this blog from the air-conditioned comfort of the convention center in Orlando. It's the first time in my six or seven years of covering ASCO that the organization has let CNBC broadcast live from inside. And, guess what? No one seems freaked out about it.

PR folks and execs who worked with me at previous ASCOs are all reminiscing about days spent outside schvitzing, getting rained on and breathing in the exhaust from the parade of ASCO shuttle buses. No more.

The only time I might spend outside today will be poolside later at my hotel.

So, we've been rockin' and rollin' with the breaking news punches, quickly rescheduling interviews we had set up due to everything else happening in the world today. It's an extraordinary newsday and fortunately, all of the PR people and execs have been flexible and understanding about our airtime constraints.

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In a way, it's a good thing that this is what everyone agrees a relatively quiet ASCO. With Genentech's colon cancer study of Avastin missing its mark and the company having been taken over by Roche, this year's ASCO doesn't have the investor/trading mojo of years' past. Some folks think it could just be a retrenching year.

Speaking of Genentech, I'm told the recently ousted CEO Art Levinson was here, sans bodyguard. And so was the company's former head of product development, Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, soon to be Chancellor of UC-San Francisco. She just came by our camera position to say, "Hi." Desond-Hellmann was an ASCO CNBC interview mainstay. This year we're talking to the guy who took her place, Dr. Hal Barron.

And one more ASCO nugget before I try to scarf down some lunch and prep for our afternoon coverage. This morning AstraZeneca [AZN Loading... () ] and Merck [MRK Loading... () ] announced they're hooking up to combine two experimental cancer drugs. It's a unique "two is better than one" deal they think could speed development. So, how did it come about? An AZN exec told me a MRK scientist was in the audience of an AZN data presentation at another scientific meeting. After hearing the results, he thought the two drugs might work well together. The scientist reached out to AZN and there you go.