News

Aegis Therapeutics (San Diego, CA) has launched a new formulation technology to increase the stability of proteins and peptides.

Adams Respiratory Therapeutics, Inc.

MSD Technology Singapore Pte Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc. (Whitehouse Station, NJ) dedicated an expansion of its production facilities in Singapore on July 28.

GlaxoSmithKline (London, England) has developed a vaccine against the H5N1 bird flu strain that, the company says, shows better immune response than other vaccines in development.

Schering AG (Berlin, Germany) voluntarily issued a worldwide recall of all lots of its X-ray contrast agent "Ultravist Injection" 370 mgI/mL (iopromide injection) because particulate matter and crystallization may be present in the product.

Contract service providers should be concerned about the market perceptions of their performance.

The US Food and Drug Administration announced its Prescription Drug User Fee Amendments of 2002 (PDUFA II) fees schedule for fiscal year 2007 (Oct. 1, 2006 - Sept. 30, 2007), including increases ranging from 17% to 19%.

Street-corner oratory may seem like a dying art, but if there's one place you can still find people literally up on their soapboxes, spewing views on religion, politics, or ethics, it's New York City. And, if there's one time I religiously follow the advice of my native New Yorker father ("Look down while you're walking and don't make eye contact with people you pass"), it's when I see these soapbox stars and the crowds surrounding them.

Thanks to you, we have this month's column. Keep those cards, letters, and e-mails coming.

Returnees and home-grown talent aim to make China a pharmaceutical powerhouse.

Ranbaxy issued three responses (March 20, April 20, May 25) to FDA's Form 483.

How does the latest agency task force report resonate for pharma and radio-frequency identification?

Industry must look at manufacturing as a competitive advantage, not just a way to get product out the door.

Albany Molecular Research, Affymax, Antares Pharma, AstraZeneca, Brookwood Pharma, DelSite, Immtech, Nektar, VaxGen, Vical

Genzyme Corporation (Cambridge, MA) reports the US Food and Drug Administration (Rockville, MD) has approved the fill?finishing, packaging, and labeling of "Thymoglobulin" (antithymocyte globulin, rabbit) at its Waterford, Ireland facility. The approval allows Genzyme to begin manufacturing and distribution of Thymoglobulin from this facility.

The UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA, London) has reissued its recall of a specific batch of counterfeit ?Lipitor? 20-mg tablets. MHRA, in conjunction with Pfizer (New York City, NY), first issued the recall of batch number 004405K1 in July 2005. The new recall is in response to the discovery of more packages of the counterfeit drug in the United Kingdom.

Roxane Laboratories (Columbus, OH), a Boehringer Ingelheim company, is conducting a voluntary recall in the United States and Puerto Rico of a single manufacturing lot of "Azathioprine"tablets, USP 50 mg.

Antigenics, Gilead, Inyx, KVD Pharma, MedImmune, Novartis, Solvias

On July 18, the US Food and Drug Administration posted a Warning Letter issued Watson Laboratories Caribe, Inc. (Corona, CA) by FDA's San Juan (PR) district office.

Seeking more than $5.8 million in damages and the recovery of nearly $1.8 billion in punitive damages, RxUSA Wholesale (Port Washington, NY) filed a complaint against 16 major US pharmaceutical manufacturers and 5 drug wholesalers.

Dietmar Hopp, cofounder of the German information technology giant SAP AG (Waldorff, Germany) is forming a new pharmaceutical company from the merger of two German biopharmaceutical companies: Axaron Bioscience AG (Heidelberg, Germany) and Lion Bioscience AG (Heidelberg, Germany).

Novartis (Basel, Switzerland) will build a cell culture-derived influenza vaccines manufacturing plant in Holly Springs, North Carolina. Construction is expected to begin in 2007.

In a move to strengthen its position in Western generic drug markets, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. (Gurgaon, Haryana, India) acquired the Mundogen generic drug business of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK, London, England) in Spain, through Ranbaxy's Spanish subsidiary, Laboratorios Ranbaxy S.L.

Vincent L. Vilker, Ph.D., has been appointed director of FDA's Office of Testing and Research (OTR). Vilker was formerly chief of the Biotechnology Division at the National Institute of Standards.

The US Food and Drug Administration today posted its final "Guidance for Industry: Providing Regulatory Submissions to the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) in Electronic Format: Lot Release Protocols."

AAI Pharma, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Altana, Athenagen, Cardinal Health, Nektar, Roche

A group of researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA) are using high-throughput ionization techniques to identify and measure the ingredients in counterfeit drugs.

Although the number of anti-infective vaccines (as distinct from therapeutic vaccines for cancers and other noninfectious diseases) entering clinical study each year since 2000 has been higher on average than it was in the 1990s, this product area may see little additional growth through the rest of this decade, according to a recentanalysis from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (Boston, MA).

Late last week, Pliva d.d. (Zagreb, Croatia) announced that the US Food and Drug Administration had granted final approval for its warfarin sodium tablets and azithromycin for oral suspension.

The Bayer Group (Leverkusen, Germany) plans to sell the diagnostics division of Bayer HealthCare to Siemens AG (Munich, Germany) for EUR 4.2 billion ($5.36 billion).