Top 10 best-selling cancer drugs of 2013

When it comes to selling big, cancer drugs have a lot going for them. Their targets--deadly diseases that in many cases can kill quickly--put them in high demand, even as they continue to redefine "premium pricing." Some newer drugs can be targeted at patient groups who have the best chances of benefiting, helping justify those high costs. And biologics, for now, don't face the same generic onslaughts that pummel pharma sales come patent expiration time.

That's not to say they don't face roadblocks. Plenty of cancer heavyweights have run into failed label expansions, governmental cost critics, patent woes and biosimilar threats. But even so, the top 10 managed to rake in worldwide sales between $1.7 billion and $7.8 billion each, according to EvaluatePharma data.

Lilly invests in early-stage UK life sciences fund

World News | Kevin Grogan 

Eli Lilly has made its first investment in a UK venture fund, managed by Epidarex Capital, which will focus on backing early-stage projects.

The US major is making “a significant capital commitment” to the fund which has raised over £47.5 million, while King’s College London has also invested in the final closing. Other participants include the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, as well as the European Investment Fund, Scottish Enterprise and Strathclyde Pension Fund.

Elaine Sullivan, head of global external R&D at Lilly, said the firm’s “commitment to this pioneering Epidarex fund will increase collaboration across industry and academia to help speed the delivery of new treatments”. She added that the investment “reflects Lilly’s strong belief in the excellence of life science R&D in the UK” and will complement its own  research and existing academic partnerships.

Chris Mottershead, head of research and innovation, at King’s College London, said funds like the Epidarex one “involving major international partners recognise the untapped potential” at UK universities. These funds “provide the much-needed capital to carry translational research from the laboratory to the commercial market, and should attract more investor interest in the world-class research carried out across the UK”.

Epidarex said the fund’s portfolio companies will benefit from its investment team’s considerable experience as well as its international network, including the USA and Asia.

New sales models are trendy in Big Pharma

FiercePharma | By Tracy Staton 

Actually, they're de rigueur: With thousands fewer drug reps on the street these days, and many doctors turning reps away, companies have had to turn to new ways of promoting their products. Plus, all those pesky Department of Justice settlements make the old hard sell seem sketchy.

What's Eli Lilly's version? According to an interview with Alex Azar, president of the Indianapolis-based company's U.S. business, it's problem-solving.

As InsuranceNewsNet reports, Lilly  sends its 2,000-plus U.S. reps into doctors' offices to "broker" solutions to patients' problems.

Οι ιδιωτικές κλινικές "φέρνουν" στην Αθήνα τον επίτροπο Ταγιάνι για τις ληξιπρόθεσμες οφειλές

Reporter.gr | Δέσποινα Καραγιαννοπούλου

Στην Αθήνα αναμένεται στις 27 Ιουνίου ο Ευρωπαίος Επίτροπος Αντόνιο Ταγιάνι, προκειμένου να εξετάσει την καταγγελία που δέχθηκε εγγράφως από την Πανελλήνια Ένωση Ιδιωτικών Κλινικών, αναφορικά με τις ληξιπρόθεσμες οφειλές προς τα μέλη της. Στην επιστολή της Ένωσης, που ήδη έχει σταλεί στον Υπουργό Υγείας, κ. Α. Γεωργιάδη, αλλά και στον πρόεδρο του ΕΟΠΥΥ, κ. Δ. Κοντό, γίνεται εκτενή αναφορά στις ληξιπρόθεσμες οφειλές των ασφαλιστικών ταμείων προς τις ιδιωτικές κλινικές.

Επιβεβαιώνοντας τα παραπάνω, ο πρόεδρος της Πανελλήνιας Ενωσης Ιδιωτικών Κλινικών, κ. Γ. Σαραφιανός, τόνισε στο "R" ότι πρέπει "εδώ και τώρα να λυθεί η θηλιά στο λαιμό των ιδιωτικών κλινικών που λέγεται ληξιπρόθεσμες οφειλές". Σύμφωνα με τον ίδιο οι οφειλές αυτές ξεκινούν από το 2007 και φθάνουν μέχρι σήμερα.

Pharma MBAs — From Mini Courses to the Full Monty

Pharmaceutical Executive | John Ansell

Over the past decade there has been a marked increase in the variety of specialist pharma MBA courses on offer. These courses last from one week in the case of most mini MBAs, up to a year’s full-time study or equivalent. And so the depth of learning provided by these different types of course varies enormously. Both the public and private sector offer courses — sometimes they are provided by alliances of both.

Who takes the courses?

As a trainer and tutor who has been involved with five different MBA courses, I see a tremendous variety in the background of participants.

All of my courses have been for organizers based in Europe; I see participants from right across the continent but also from other regions — particularly the Middle East. Course participants are mostly in middle or senior management positions. Most are working in the pharmaceutical industry or for companies serving the industry but who lack commercial background. Most commonly participants have an R&D background.

Three launches this year just the beginning of Teva turnaround, CEO says

FiercePharma | By Carly Helfand 

Three new drug launches in 2014 won't save Teva's  sales if generics attack Copaxone later this week. But they certainly will help.

Those launches are just what the Israeli company has on the way, CEO Erez Vigodman told a conference Friday, according to Reuters. And that trio--comprising migraine patch Zecuity, Symbicort generic DuoResp Spiromax, and Adasuve, an inhalation powder to treat agitation in schizophrenia patients--will ultimately combine for peak sales of $1 billion, estimates say.

Of course, that's just one piece of the Israeli drugmaker's plan to get back on track after patent woes, restructuring plans, labor protests, management changes and shareholder unrest rocked the company in the past several months. Vigodman said earlier this month that Teva wants to refocus on its generics business and plunge into the biosimilars race. M&A isn't out of the question, either, and rumors listed Teva as a suitor for India's Cipla just a couple weeks ago.

The Rise Of The Pharmaceutical Un-Sales Force

Forbes | Cory L. Andrews   

In a variation on the old saying “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” a number of states have initiated programs where purportedly independent clinicians, pharmacists and other medical personnel pay visits to physicians as a way of countering the information delivered to health care providers by drug company sales people (who are known as “detailers”).  States such as Pennsylvania and South Carolina are funding this “academic detailing” as a tool to reduce those governments’ prescription drug-related health care expenses.  Counter-detailers reportedly inform doctors that older drugs or less expensive generics can be as or more effective in treating some conditions than newer, patented products.  Thanks to the 2009 federal stimulus bill and the ObamaCare law, the federal government is now looking to get into the academic detailing business.

European Parliament Elections: Rebuilding European Pharma's Competitive Agenda

For European business, the perils of the immediate past are being replaced by the promise of the future, as the financial crisis appears to recede, and the prospect beckons of new opportunities under a new European Parliament and a new European Commission. The European Parliament elections this month will bring many fresh faces to Brussels, and every lobby group in town is already planning how to win their attention and hopefully their favour. Of even more significance, a new European Commission is due to take office in November, replacing the timid and tired ten-year administration of José Manuel Barroso with — it is hoped — a team bursting with renewed dynamism and energy, and with a readiness to listen to well-formed policy pitches.

What next for Pfizer? Perhaps a return to the popular breakup idea

Bloomberg| Drew Armstrong 

With prospects for an AstraZeneca Plc deal falling apart, Pfizer Inc.  Chief Executive Officer Ian Read is facing a new question from investors: What now?

There aren’t other ripe targets offering the triple benefits of a lower tax rate in the U.K., cost savings and new cancer drugs, analysts say. Without AstraZeneca’s promise of new growth, Read, 60, will likely return to an earlier plan to further break up what was once the world’s biggest drugmaker.

Read has split Pfizer into at least two units internally, with the idea they may one day be spun off on their own, potentially giving investors a choice between one business stocked with brand-name drugs and a second with older products.

While Read may have failed with AstraZeneca, he’s gained a reputation for doing what’s needed to please investors. Pfizer’s shares have gained 75 percent since he took over as CEO in December 2010. “He’ll do anything to get the stock price up,” said Jeff Jonas, an investor with Gabelli & Co. in Rye, New York. “As long as he continues to have that view, he’ll be fine.”

Prepping for $25B merger, Actavis taps Forest CEO Saunders to lead combined company

When Actavis CEO Paul Bisaro announced his big buyout of Forest Laboratories, he sketched a picture of a brand-plus-generic powerhouse with lower costs and bigger revenue prospects. Now, it will be Forest CEO Brent Saunders who colors in those lines as chief executive of the merged company.

That doesn't mean Bisaro won't have significant power; he'll be executive chairman, a newly created post. Saunders, who joined Forest in September after selling Bausch & Lomb to Valeant Pharmaceuticals , is set to take the day-to-day reins as CEO and president. Actavis and Forest vets alike will fill out the executive team.

That team will have a big job ahead in integrating Actavis and Forest, one a generics leader, the other a mid-sized brand player with lots of generic competition and several new meds to pump up to size.

Top 18 Best-Selling Drugs Launched in 2013

2013 wasn’t technically a blockbuster year for new drugs, since no treatment launched last year reached the magic billion-dollar benchmark. But one drug came close, and at least two other 2013 launches started strongly enough to suggest that they may become blockbusters this year. Overall, sales figures for 2013 launches were a tale of two tiers—over $100 million by at least four new drugs, and another 14 launches whose sales fell around the same range as the new drugs launched during 2012. That adds up to just 18 best sellers.

Governors Push Pfizer About Jobs in AstraZeneca Deal

Bloomberg |  Michelle Fay Cortez 

The governors of Maryland and Delaware have asked Pfizer Inc. Chief Executive Officer Ian Read whether jobs will be cut in their states after the drugmaker promised to keep people employed in the U.K. as a way to further a $100 billion-plus bid to buy AstraZeneca Plc. (AZN)

If the acquisition occurs, it would allow Pfizer to move its legal address from New York to the U.K. to gain a lower tax rate. Read told U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron that Pfizer would keep at least 20 percent of the combined company’s research and development workers and substantial manufacturing facilities in the U.K. for at least five years to win support for the deal.

Samsung Invests in Drugs

Bloomberg | Kanoko Matsuyama and Jungah Lee

 

Samsung Group transformed its electronics unit into the world’s largest smartphone maker by outselling Apple Inc. (AAPL) Now it’s setting sights on the drug industry.

South Korea’s biggest company is investing at least $2 billion in biopharmaceuticals, including the growing segment of biosimilars, which are cheaper versions of brand-name biotechnology drugs that have lost patent protection.

Samsung, with $327 billion annual revenue, aims to become a major force in biotechnology, an industry expected to generate sales of more than $220 billion in five years. With the electronics market reaching saturation, billionaire chairman Lee Kun Hee has been investing in new areas that might shore up growth for the family-controlled company.

“We are in an infancy still,” Christopher Hansung Ko, chief executive officer at the Samsung Bioepis unit, said in an interview. “We are a Samsung company. Our mandate is to become No. 1 in everything we enter into, so our long-term goal is to become a leading pharmaceutical company in the world.”

At the heart of those plans are biosimilars. Samsung plans to sell its first biosimilar version of Amgen Inc. (AMGN)’s arthritis therapy Enbrel in 2016 in Europe and a version of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)’s Remicade treatment for autoimmune diseases in 2017, according to Ko. A separate unit called Samsung Biologics Co. has contracts to manufacture biologic medicines for branded pharmaceutical companies.

Big Pharma's Favorite Prescription: Higher Prices

Bloomberg | Robert Langreth*  

Earl Harford, a retired professor who lives in Tucson, recently bought a month’s worth of the pills he needs to keep his leukemia at bay. The cost: $7,676, three times more than when he began taking the pills in 2001. Over the years he’s paid more than $140,000 of his retirement savings to cover his share of the drug’s price. “People with this condition are being taken advantage of by the pharmaceutical industry,” says Harford. “They haven’t improved the drug; they haven’t done anything but keep manufacturing it. How do they justify it?”

As evidenced by Pfizer’s (PFE) proposed $100 billion-plus takeover of AstraZeneca (AZN), Big Pharma is in the throes of the greatest period of consolidation in a decade. One reality remains unchanged, however: Drug prices keep defying the law of gravity. Since October 2007 the cost of brand-name medicines has soared, with prices doubling for dozens of established drugs that target everything from multiple sclerosis to cancer, blood pressure, and even erectile dysfunction, according to an analysis conducted for Bloomberg. While the consumer price index rose just 12 percent during the period, one diabetes drug quadrupled in price and another rose 160 percent, according to an analysis by DRX, a provider of comparison and management software for health plans.

Starting prices for drugs are escalating as well. Fifteen cancer drugs introduced in the past five years cost more than $10,000 a month, according to data from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. A cholesterol-lowering treatment for those with certain rare genetic disorders costs $311,000 a year, and a cystic fibrosis medicine—developed partly with funding from a charity—costs $300,000 annually.

Lundbeck to buy U.S. firm Chelsea Therapeutics for up to $658 mln

COPENHAGEN, May 8 (Reuters) 

Danish pharmaceutical company H. Lundbeck is to buy Chelsea Therapeutics for up to $658 million in a deal that would give it the rights to the U.S firm's neurology drug Northera.

Chelsea stockholders will be offered $6.44 per share in cash and contingent value rights (CVRs) that may pay up to $1.50 per share, the two firms said. The total would represent a premium of 59 percent over Wednesday's closing price of Chelsea shares.

By acquiring Chelsea Therapeutics, Lundbeck would gain the rights to Northera, which was recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is expected to be launched in the third quarter of 2014.

The drug treats a rare form of low blood pressure associated with neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease.

Northera has the potential to become the most valuable of Lundbeck's four neurological drugs in the United States, the Danish company said.

Lundbeck Chief Executive Ulf Wiinberg said at a conference call that the drug "fits perfectly" into Lundbeck's existing portfolio of drugs, which mainly consists of drugs for brain diseases.

The Chelsea board unanimously approved the transaction but it still requires the approval of Chelsea shareholders which Lundbeck said it expected to receive in the summer.

"Lundbeck is doing this to increase its long-term earnings," Sydbank analyst Soren Lontoft Hansen told Reuters. "The criteria for success is whether they can generate a peak (annual) sale for Northera of $400 million."

Shares in Lundbeck were up 0.4 percent at 1325 GMT, outperforming the Danish benchmark index which was down 0.1 percent. Shares in Chelsea Therapeutics were up 32.8 percent in premarket trading.

 “Pharmaceutical Marketing for Non – Marketers” 

30 - 31 of May - Metropolitan Hotel, Athen


Click here to download the seminar brochure: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ua7bfnkh4c9bmg3/Pharma%20Marketing%20for%20Non%20Marketers.pdf
  

Payers don't trust pharma. The fix? Risky trials and transparency

New survey research finds that the majority payers in the US and Europe believe that drug adherence solutions and data that pharma companies possess are vital to lowering health care costs and improving outcomes. However, lingering mistrust of the pharma industry is likely to stymie efforts by pharma companies to engage with payers in these areas without a fundamental change from current approaches. These and other findings were released today in Progressions: Navigating the payer landscape, Ernst & Young 's annual report on the global pharmaceutical industry.

As part of this year's Progressions report, Ernst & Young surveyed 30 US payers and 30 European payers on their current and future needs and preferences, and 18 global pharmaceutical companies on how well they understand payers' needs and attitudes. This survey was supplemented by in-depth interviews with industry executives in the US and Europe. Key findings include:

Τα απαγορευμένα σποτάκια και η ανακοίνωση του Φαρμακευτικού Συλλόγου Αττικής

AΘΗΝΑ   6  ΜΑΪΟΥ   2014        

                                                                  ΠΡΟΣ

                       

-      Μ.Μ.Ε.

-      ΟΛΑ ΤΑ ΚΟΜΜΑΤΑ

ΔΕΛΤΙΟ ΤΥΠΟΥ

«ΦΙΜΩΣΗ ΤΗΣ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑΣ»

Η κυβέρνηση προχώρησε σήμερα, σε μία πρωτοφανή πράξη φίμωσης του Δημοκρατικού λόγου, και της ελεύθερης έκφρασης πολιτικών φορέων, συνδικαλιστικών οργανώσεων επιστημονικών κλάδων κ.λ.π.

Απαγορεύει με Υπουργική Απόφαση την μετάδοση οποιουδήποτε μηνύματος μπορεί να χαρακτηριστεί από την κυβέρνηση ως πολιτικό και που προφανώς «θα την βλάψει» ενόψει των επερχόμενων εκλογών.

Αυτή η πρωτοφανής λογοκρισία δεν έχει προηγούμενο σε μία ευνομούμενη Δημοκρατία.

Ο ΦΣΑ καλεί όλα τα κόμματα να πάρουν θέση. Δηλώνει προς κάθε κατεύθυνση ότι με αυτές τις ενέργειες οι φαρμακοποιοί πεισμώνουν ακόμη περισσότερο και θα δυναμώσουν τους αγώνες τους.  Να είναι σίγουροι οι εμπνευστές – λογοκριτές ότι οι φαρμακοποιοί θα καταδικάσουν και με την ψήφο τους, αυτούς που τα τελευταία χρόνια έχουν οδηγήσει ολόκληρη την κοινωνία σε ανθρωπιστική κρίση.

ΓΙΑ ΤΟΝ Φ.Σ.Α.

Ο   ΠΡΟΕΔΡΟΣ                                                 Ο ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΕΑΣ

ΚΩΝΣΤΑΝΤΙΝΟΣ  ΛΟΥΡΑΝΤΟΣ                      ΗΛΙΑΣ  ΓΙΑΝΝΟΓΛΟΥ


Δείτε εδώ τα απαγορευμένα σποτάκια

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ07s3E1WFE&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q_5iuS27DE&feature=youtu.be

 

Three days left to get registered at the early bird rate to attend the “Pharmaceutical Marketing for Non – Marketers” seminar.

30 - 31 of May - Metropolitan Hotel, Athens

Early Bird Registrations until, Friday 9th May. 


Click here to download the seminar brochure: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ua7bfnkh4c9bmg3/Pharma%20Marketing%20for%20Non%20Marketers.pdf