The attorneys general of 14 states and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit against drugmaker Amgen Inc. and a major pharmaceutical distributor charging the companies colluded to defraud the Medicaid program and offer illegal kickbacks to physicians in order to boost sales of Amgen's anemia drug Aranesp.

The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey has granted preliminary approval of a Settlement in a class action lawsuit involving the prescription drugs Zetia® and Vytorin®. The lawsuit is called In re Vytorin/Zetia Marketing, Sales Practices, and Products Liability Litigation, No. 08-285-(DMC).

The Union-Tribune reports that "Arena Pharmaceuticals failed to impress analysts and investors yesterday when it revealed the results of its first phase 3 clinical trial for the drug lorcaserin."

In another pharmaceutical deal of the day Gilead is acquiring CV Therapeutics for 20 US dollars per share. The CV Therapeutics deal is thought to expand Gilead's cardiovascular franchise and pipeline.

The Roche Genentech deal is estimated for US$46.8 billion making Roche one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Indeed, with all the negative market news lately, it's nice to see news like this that appears to be good news for both parties involved. We say good news for parties because Roche and Genentech call the buyout as "friendly."

Alexandra Andrews, ProPublica - This past weekend, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a slew of articles about dozens of doctors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who have side jobs with drug companies [1]. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) has also trained his eye on UW, where federally mandated disclosure forms don't require doctors to specify the amount of any industry pay exceeding $20,000.

Abbott hopes that the acquisition of Advanced Medical Optics will mean adding an established global leader in ophthalmic care that will provide long-term sustainable growth platform with more than $1 billion in annual sales. Advanced Medical Optics' acquisition will also gives Abbott a leadership position in another large and growing medical device segment.

The companies that make your drugs fear price cuts from the Obama administration. Biotech companies already price drugs at very high gross margins, they fear Barack Obama’s health care reform will cut into their profits. Obama supports lowering drug prices as a requirement for making health care coverage affordable to all Americans.

The statement recently issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), acknowledging that there may be a link between the use of the pharmaceutical drug Singulair and suicidal thoughts in its users, represents yet another instance of case reports conflicting with clinical trials and causing the FDA to have to step in. The struggle for more, and better, disclosure between the pharmaceutical industry, medical practitioners and patients is a battle of the utmost importance.

Roche Pharmaceutical this morning made a cash offer to pharmaceutical drug maker Genentech to buy the rest of the shares for US$89.00 per share in cash.

While you thought that those Vioxx studies in medical journals were independent, hands-off affairs that may not have been necessarily true. An examination of medical journal articles about Vioxx and court documents from Vioxx lawsuits found that Merck employees or ghostwriters were frequently involved in various articles, but the primary authors were often academics who actually had little to do with the studies or didn’t always disclose financial ties to Merck.

A method of creating selective terminable transgenic rice was reported by the scientists of Zhejiang University in this week’s PLoS ONE. Unintended spreading of transgenic rice by pollen and seed dispersal is a major concern for planting transgenic rice, especially transgenic rice expressing pharmaceutical or industrial proteins.