The sun is shining on the nation’s medicine chest this morning. And so as we reach for our first cup of stimulation, please join us in catching up on events. We hope your days goes well - meetings, deadlines and assorted pressures aside…
Pfizer Drops NicOx Glaucoma Drug (Yahoo/Reuters)
Long-Term Ibuprofen Use Cuts Alzheimer’s Risk (Reuters)
Glaxo Creates [...]

A fight has erupted in Congress over the question of whether companies should be allowed to keep patents they obtained by misrepresentation or cheating, The New York Times reports. And the issue has emerged as a contentious point in legislation to overhaul patent laws.
In several cases, the courts have voided patents after finding that [...]

Drug and device makers shouldn’t be allowed to offer freebies - including meals, gifts, travel and ghost-writing helps - to docs, staffers and students in any or all 129 of the nation’s medical colleges, according to a new report from the Association of American Medical Colleges, which spents two years on the project.
“Over recent decades, [...]

Earlier this year, we noted that New Jersey’s Medicaid program spent more than $73 million on several antipsychotic meds for children less than 18 years old between 2000 and 2007, according to state records, even though the drugs weren’t approved by the FDA for treating kids. And a state official acknowledges the drugs may have [...]

Lilly posted lower-than-expected quarterly earnings, as disappointing sales of its Byetta diabetes drug overshadowed growing demand for its older diabetes treatments and Cialis impotence drug. Net income was $1.06 billion, or 97 cents a share, compared with $508.7 million, or 47 cents, a year earlier. Excluding special items, Lilly earned 92 cents per share, below [...]

The drugmaker is scaling back at sites in Indianapolis that make active pharmaceutical ingredients for the Humalog and Humulin insulin meds, as well as for the Forteo osteoporosis treatment. UPDATE: A Lilly spokesman tells us that 430 of the jobs will come from manufacturing, no sites are being closed and API production isn’t being shifted [...]

Four years ago, Lilly and several other drugmakers proposed the creation of The Florida Behavioral Health Collaborative. And they provided $10 million to the state to get it up and running. Soon, an expert panel was convened and recommended state standards, and national scholars with financial ties to drugmakers that sell atypicals were invited to [...]

At a federal court hearing in Brooklyn yesterday, US District Judge Jack Weinstein told lawyers that he probably won’t allow patients and insurers who paid for Zyprexa for uses approved by the FDA, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, to sue the drugmaker as a group. He also doesn’t expect the purchasers will be able [...]

File this under ‘Say Uncle.’ A dozen drug and device makers have told Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican, that they have plans or are working on plans to publicly disclose grants to outside groups, and the details will be provided on each company’s Web sites, the Associated Press reports. In particular, Grassley is interested in [...]

Forget about Exubera and lung cancer. Alfred Mann, the 82-year-old Los Angeles billionaire and philanthropist who has bet nearly half of his estimated $2.2 billion fortune that he can develop an inhaled version of insulin for the nation’s 5 million diabetics, isn’t giving up. Long shot or no, he remains committed to developing a similar [...]