And so the time has come once again to put aside the workload and break for a little dinner. We hope your day went well and you accomplished what you set out to do. As for us, we have a little errand to run for Mrs. Pharmalot. A bit of a surprise, in fact. So [...]

The line is growing ever longer. First, the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Finance Committee opened investigations into the controversial Vytorin trial, known as Enhance. Then, the New York and Connecticut Attorneys General begin their own probes into the handling of study data and the marketing of the expensive cholesterol med. Earlier [...]

By and large, Amgen shareholders are not a happy bunch. The biotech’s stock is down about one-third in the past year, thanks to various FDA warnings and health risks associated with its Aranesp and Epogen anemia meds, not to mention reduced Medicare reimbursement. For awhile, ceo Kevin Sharer appeared in denial, until he began slashing [...]

The biologic, which is used to treat arthritis and psoriasis, which already included a warning over the risk of TB and other infections, but gets the more serious warning to suggest screening and monitoring patients for TB, including those who test negative for latent tuberculosis infection. The Black Box aslo notes that TB has been [...]

The ongoing battle between the biotech and some former sales reps - who allege they were forced to promote the psoriasis treatment off-label and violate patient privacy - now centers on a pair of older studies showing the biologic was linked to congestive heart failure.
The issue, which is mentioned in a complaint filed by [...]

In the fall of 2006, Amgen was worried about a key product - Enbrel, a biologic used to treat psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. The med was a big seller, but hit a rough patch - sales in that year’s third quarter rose a mere 5 percent to $705 million thanks to increasing competition. And this [...]

Two years ago, Amgen was worried about increased competition in the psoriasis market for its Enbrel medication. And the biotech has since been accused by former sales reps of encouraging various improper activities to boost prescriptions - reps were allegedly told to pull patient files from doctors’ office, orchestrate letter-writing campaigns to patients and insurers, [...]

In May 2006, David Peng, a dermatology professor at the University of Southern California, was disturbed by claims made by an Amgen district manager, who was trying to boost Enbrel at the expense of an older psoriasis med, methotrexate. And so Peng banned Amgen reps from doing ‘lunch-in-learns’ with residents at his clinic at USC’s [...]

For those curious about invention royalties, consider Brian Seed. The biologist and Massachusetts General Hospital researcher made some discoveries that were crucial to the development of Enbrel, the arthritis treatment.
Seed found a way to fuse proteins that act as decoys, and Enbrel researchers used that technique for arthritis, blocking the body’s inflammatory response to arthritic [...]