Category: Generics

MEwens
Hanging On: Pfizer CEO Ian Read said the company’s name-brand Lipitor is retaining 37% to 38% of the overall U.S. market share for the drug as new generic versions compete for customers, the WSJ reports. Speaking at the J.P. Morgan health-care conference in San Francisco, Read said it would be hard for Lipitor […]

MEwens
Incoming Teva CEO Jeremy Levin (front).
The early reaction to Teva’s CEO shuffle has been positive. Shares in the Israeli pharmaceutical company were up more than 5 percent this morning, and Wall Street analysts praised the skills of incoming CEO Jeremy Levin, whose deal-making has helped revive Bristol-Myers Squibb.
When Levin succeeds Shlomo Yanai […]

MEwens
A lot of eyes in the pharma world are focused on  how the introduction of a generic version of Lipitor will affect the market for the cholesterol-fighting drug.
Last week, for example, researchers published an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine that found cost savings from switches to the generic version of […]

MEwens
Generic Lipitor Approval: Indian drug company Ranbaxy, a unit of Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo, has received FDA approval for its generic version of Pfizer’s Lipitor, the WSJ reports. (Ranbaxy will share profits from the drug during the first 180 days with Teva, according to the company.) The FDA says Ranbaxy’s atorvastatin calcium tablets will […]

MEwens
What everyone knows as Lipitor has also had a chemical name: atorvastatin. And it’s atorvastatin that the generic version of Lipitor will be called, once the brand goes off patent Wednesday.
This is normal. Drug makers give a chemical name to medicines in development, before unveiling a brand name. Many doctors write out the […]

MEwens
The world’s biggest selling drug of all time — the cholesterol medicine Lipitor — goes generic at the end of the month. Will the world’s leading maker of generic drugs be selling no-name Lipitor pills?
A lot of tongues are wagging.
Lipitor loses U.S. patent protection Nov. 30. Selling generic versions is a big prize, […]

MEwens
Looser Rules: The Obama administration relaxed rules for so-called accountable care organizations, the centerpiece of a program designed to reduce health-care costs by better coordinating prevention and treatment for Medicare patients, the WSJ reports. Medical groups had called draft guidelines released earlier this year too tough and indicated they wouldn’t likely participate in […]

MEwens
Mindful of concerns about health-care’s spiraling costs, the Blog was struck by some new research on what the investigators identified as wasteful practices by family doctors and general practitioners.
Not being doctors, we can’t vouch for the clinical appropriateness of the findings, but there’s no harm with triggering a discussion, right?
What did the researchers say was the No. […]

MEwens
Money-Saving Opportunity?: A new report by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services says the Medicare program could have saved more than $1 billion over two years if Genentech’s cancer drug Avastin had been prescribed off-label for wet macular degeneration rather than Lucentis, the company’s similar, costlier drug that […]

MEwens
Raising Questions: The debate over whether antibiotics should be used less frequently in livestock has been revived by the recent recall of ground turkey tainted by salmonella bacteria that is resistant to many of the drugs, the WSJ reports. Food-safety experts say that routine use of antibiotics in feed as a preventive can […]