/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ en-us derek-lowe@sbcglobal.net 2008-08-21T07:11:17-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/08/21/rnai_bubble_or_not.php Many readers will well remember when Merck bought the RNA-interference company Sirna in 2006. They paid over a billion dollars for them, and made the whole RNA area an even bigger field for speculation than it was already. Another big... 73507@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2008-08-21T07:11:17-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/08/18/genentech_and_roche_act_two.php So Genentech has told Roche to get lost – well, to a first approximation, anyway. I think what they’ve actually told them is to go open their Swiss wallets wider. What it comes down to now is how highly Genentech... 73499@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2008-08-18T09:57:07-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/08/05/roche_palo_alto_whats_going_on.php I've just been told (by a reliable source) that something big is up with the Roche-Palo Alto site. I don't know if this is part of their bid for Genentech or what, but the word "closing" has been mentioned. I... 73487@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2008-08-05T19:14:09-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/08/04/job_seekers_genentech_gsk_and_elsewhere.php As mentioned in the comments here (and as told to me by e-mail as well), a lot of Genentech employees are looking around for other options in the face of a possible Roche takeover. A lot of Genentech employees –... 73482@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2008-08-04T07:30:52-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/08/01/gsk_layoffs_yes_again.php The ax is falling again at GlaxoSmithKline. This time it’s the oncology group. Last month the cardiovascular people got this same treatment, you’ll recall, and there was some disagreement about how many jobs were being affected. But it looks like... 73479@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cancer 2008-08-01T07:24:07-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/07/29/iloperidone_a_schizophrenia_drug_goes_down_for_the_last_time.php I've talked about a lot of difficult therapeutic areas, but here's another boulevard of broken dreams: schizophrenia drugs. I was working on follow-ups to a promising clincial candidate, which has since been promising a number of times without ever delivering.... 73473@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ The Central Nervous System 2008-07-29T07:39:09-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/07/25/should_genentech_be_a_part_of_roche.php Now for some belated Roche/Genentech comments: the first thing that I found surprising about this was that there was some surprise involved. Even though a move to buy the rest of Genentech has always been a possibility, the actual timing... 73466@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2008-07-25T07:13:47-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/07/22/vytorin_another_round_of_nasty_results.php Merck took the unusual step of delaying its earnings release yesterday until after the close of the market. A report on another clinical study of Vytorin (ezetimibe), their drug with Schering-Plough, was coming out, so they put the numbers on... 73455@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cardiovascular Disease 2008-07-22T08:08:24-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/07/11/sharing_the_enlightenment.php Here's an interesting idea: Merck, Lilly, and Pfizer are bankrolling a startup company to look for new technologies for drug development. Enlight Biosciences will focus on the biggest bottlenecks and risk points in the process, including new imaging techniques for... 73433@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2008-07-11T07:37:23-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/07/10/more_on_outsourcing.php In the wake of continued expansion of medicinal chemistry efforts in China, a discussion between me and some of my colleagues at work had me sticking to my positions: (1) Scientific outsourcing is not going to go away, although it... 73430@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2008-07-10T07:40:47-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/07/07/pfizers_prospects_just_ducky.php I thought I’d start out the week by opening the mailbag for a recent reply to my posts about Pfizer’s research cutbacks. Here’s a perspective that you won’t get from me, at any rate: You never surprise me of your... 73423@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2008-07-07T07:17:28-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/06/16/alli_underwhelming.php About a year ago, I wrote about GSK's attempt to sell the lipase inhibitor orlistat over the counter as Alli: "So my forecast for Alli is strong sales - for a while. Then it takes a dive, never to scale... 73369@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2008-06-16T06:32:02-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/06/12/suits_vs_lab_coats.php Well, this is turning into GlaxoSmithKline week around here, but with good reason. I’ve had a lot of mail from people who have been affected by this week’s cutbacks, and others who left the company before the latest round. And... 73362@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2008-06-12T08:13:52-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/06/11/more_on_the_gsk_layoffs.php Thoughts on the GSK cutbacks, whose size, interestingly, is reported by Reuters this morning as (only) 350 jobs (i.e. 2%) worldwide, a figure which does not jibe with what I've been hearing from various people on the ground: 1. If... 73360@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2008-06-11T07:37:30-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/06/10/gsk_moneygreen_outside_pinkslip_inside.php Update: GSK is indeed wielding the ax today and tomorrow. I'm hearing that that the smallest cuts are around 40% of the entire research staff at the various sites. This is big, and it's bad. . . GlaxoSmithKline has been... 73355@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2008-06-10T07:19:24-05:00