In The News

Pfizer Cholesterol Failures Cleared Path for Canadian Upstart
Resverlogix Corp., without a marketed product, may accomplish what Pfizer Inc., the world’s biggest drugmaker, couldn’t: Creating a new medicine that fights heart disease by raising so-called good cholesterol.

Mystery Medicine for Alzheimer’s May Yield Advance for Pfizer
Doctors may learn next month that Dimebon, a 27-year-old hay fever treatment and one of the most mysterious compounds yet tried to fight dementia, is poised to become their newest and perhaps best weapon against Alzheimer’s.

Five Drugs That Could Be Blockbusters
These treatments could help the bottom lines of companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Bayer and Novo Nordisk
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Revisiting Medivation
Shares of biopharmaceutical firm Medivation Inc. ( MDVN | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) have had a nice run-up over the past one year and currently trade around $37, representing a more than two-fold rise. The stock was trading around $23 when the company was profiled on our site last July.
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Prescription Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology
A Return Of The Blockbuster, But Can 2009 Launches Live Up To Potential?

Sales of drugs to treat atrial fibrillation in seven major world markets are set to grow more than sevenfold to $6.1 billion by 2018 from $790 million last year, says a new report.
This fast growth in the USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan will be driven by the launches of a number of new agents, including a strong pipeline of oral fixed-dose anticoagulants, most notably Boehringer Ingelheim’s Pradaxa (dabigatran etexilate) and Bayer/Johnson & Johnson’s Xarelto (rivaroxaban), plus Sanofi-Aventis’s antiarrhythmic agent Multaq (dronedarone), according to the study, from Decision Resources.

From Promise to Payoff
After five years of in-licensing drugs and buying biotech companies outright, Big Pharma's shopping spree may be finally moving from promise to payoff. The new drug applications (NDAs) submitted by the Pfizers and Mercks of the world are increasingly for out-of-house discoveries to which the world's biggest drugmakers biggest contribution is bankrolling, designing, and executing late-stage clinical trials.

Drugmakers develop pill to boost female sexual desire
In the area of sexual dysfunction, it may be the woman’s turn for a break-through.

Novo Nordisk re-launches hemophilia campaign
Novo Nordisk Inc. announced the re-launch of its “changing possibilities in hemophilia” campaign with a re-branded Web site and a new community on the social networking site Facebook. The new online resources are intended to reach the hemophilia inhibitor community, which represents just 800 to 900 Americans, according to the health care company, whose U.S. headquarters are based in Princeton.

Slow diagnosis hampers uptake of fibromyalgia drugs
As the number of FDA-approved fibromyalgia therapies has grown, so has patient hope.  However, the condition is still not well understood by the medical community overall, hampering uptake of branded drugs approved for the disorder.  A new report suggests that better training for internists, who are on the front lines of diagnosis and treatment, could help.