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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

Sequenom Board To CEO: "You're Fired"

Published: Tuesday, 29 Sep 2009 | 11:32 AM ET

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By: Mike Huckman
Reporter

Sequenom
CNBC.com
It's the equivalent of slipping a press release with negative news under the door at the close of business on a Friday.

But after the closing bell on Yom Kippur, when many people including me were trying to give up food and tweeting for a day, Sequenom [SQNM Loading... () ] tossed a grenade.

But the real headline doesn't appear in the press release until the fourth paragraph. The board fired the CEO and head of R & D plus three other staffers. The CFO and another exec quit.

The top of the release talks about how an internal investigation revealed Sequenom messed up big time in disclosing clinical trial data from its experimental diagnostic test for Down syndrome. There are no details. And then it went on to list bullet points about steps the company's taking to prevent it from happening again before finally disclosing the C-suite bloodbath.

On CNBC.com - Best American CEOs of All Time

What's more, at a time when some of us were about to break the Yom Kippur fast, Sequenom scheduled a conference call at 5 p.m. ET yesterday. Needless to say, I didn't listen to it. I felt guilty enough that I had tweeted the news and violated my self-imposed high holiday electronic disconnection.

This morning Leerink Swann, whose specialty is healthcare stocks, stopped coverage of SQNM because the future of the company looks so uncertain. And Lazard Capital Markets told clients in a research note, "What concerns us: Basically everything." Ouch.

It seems to me that a tiny biopharma company that is in the midst of a huge crisis of confidence and credibility could do better than to try to sneak out a bombshell of a press release at the end of the quietest day of the year for observant Jews. It doesn't help.

Questions? Comments? and follow me on Twitter at mhuckman