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Sebelius on Vaccines

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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

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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

A Tysabri Turnaround Or A Head Fake?

Published: Thursday, 16 Jul 2009 | 4:00 PM ET

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By: Mike Huckman
Reporter

Carl Icahn
Shiho Fukada / AP
Carl Icahn

Carl Icahn and all of the Elanians should be happy.

Biogen Idec today reported encouraging trends regarding its all-important multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri.

BIIB [BIIB Loading... () ] and Ireland's Elan [ELN Loading... () ]are partners on the drug.

And Icahn is a BIIB investor who recently won a couple of seats on the company's board of directors.

Tysabri is an injectable drug that helps cut the frequency and severity of MS flare-ups. But recently, some analysts and investors have expressed concern about Tysabri's prospects because of a pickup in the number of reported cases of a very rare, potentially fatal side effect. The company responded by giving weekly updates on PML reports, but today BIIB said it'll stop doing that next week. The company pulled the drug off the market after the condition known as PML first cropped up, but later got FDA permission to bring it back to the market three years ago.

I covered the meeting of the FDA panel that considered whether to recommend Tysabri's return. Nearly all of these advisory committee meetings can be extremely dense and dull. It's not uncommon to see several people nodding off in the middle of the meeting. But the Tysabri affair was emotional and, at times, powerful and moving. A few of the MS patients who testified were crying, begging the panel to let the drug come back. Despite the known risk of death, they believed the benefits were too strong.

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Doctors have become more vigilant about PML and they now know how to quickly flush the drug out of the patient's system and get them out of danger. Since Tysabri has come back to market there have been 10 known PML cases, but only one of them was fatal. Experts think that the longer a patient is on Tysabri, the greater the chances are of getting PML, so they expect the number of cases to continue to pile up in coming months. On the conference call, analysts say execs indicated they're looking at treatment alternatives like possibly taking a Tysabri break and they're trying to figure out why most of the new cases are occurring overseas.

Because there'd been some analyst chatter about the acceleration of PML cases causing a slowdown in Tysabri sales, many were surprised today to see BIIB report that the number of patients on Tysabri is actually growing, sales are climbing and the rate at which new patients are going on the drug is picking up as well. The company now says that Tysabri is on track to become a billion-dollar blockbuster. Still, some analysts are cautious and don't think Tysabri is out of the woods yet.

I hope the apparent turnaround for the franchise will encourage Biogen Idec's CEO Jim Mullen to get back out there. He used to regularly give us an interview, but I don't think he's been on CNBC since 2007.

Carl, can you help?

Questions? Comments? and follow me on Twitter at mhuckman