/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ en-us derek-lowe@sbcglobal.net 2009-11-06T08:55:48-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/11/06/thoughts_on_what_used_to_be_scheringplough.php So what are we up to now, Day Three of Greater Merck? The merger with Schering-Plough went through earlier this week, and you won't get any more numbers by searching the stock tickers for SGP. I find that weird, since... 74127@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2009-11-06T08:55:48-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/11/02/in_which_you_get_to_hear_the_phrase_hatchwaxman_again.php There's a constant running battle in the drug industry between the two kinds of pharmaceutical companies: the ones who discover the drugs first, and the ones who sell the drugs cheaply after the patents have expired. It surprises me still... 74120@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2009-11-02T07:45:21-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/10/30/fifty_years_of_scientific_history_for_you.php Here's a most interesting graph from the latest issue of Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. It's from an article on trying to discern trends from broad-scale literature analysis, and it's worth a separate blog post of its own (coming shortly). But... 74118@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Drug Industry History 2009-10-30T08:50:16-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/10/28/you_mean_you_dont_have_to_buy_them.php Johnson & Johnson's CEO has given an interview to the Financial Times explaining his company's strategy with acquisitions. And right now, that strategy is. . .not to make acquisitions. They see partnerships as making a lot more sense: “The cost... 74114@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2009-10-28T06:30:47-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/10/21/o_brave_new_world_that_has_such_companies_int.php Steve Usdin at BioCentury sent along a reprint of the newsletter's annual "Back to School" issue from last month (available for open access here) in response to my note about "micropharma" the other day. And it's clear that he's been... 74105@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2009-10-21T07:16:48-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/10/15/fall_from_grace.php A couple of articles have come together and gotten me to thinking. Back during the summer, long-time medicinal chemist Mark Murcko published a short editorial in Drug Discovery Today comemmerating the Apollo 11 moon landing's 40th anniversary: "People like me,... 74098@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Why Everyone Loves Us 2009-10-15T07:14:19-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/09/17/the_drug_business_a_turbulent_future.php One of this blog's regular correspondents has just been attending a chemistry outsourcing conference (program here), and heard a very interesting talk from Stefan Loren of a Baltimore investment advisory firm, Westwicke Partners. Loren's a product of the Sharpless lab,... 74064@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2009-09-17T06:25:47-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/09/04/sepracor_a_desirable_property.php Well, I didn't see this one coming. Dainippon Sumitomo has announced that they're buying Sepracor. My first thought on reading this was "Are they sure they want to do that?" I say that because the ostensible reason that the Japanese... 74050@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2009-09-04T07:07:36-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/08/27/rings_of_the_future.php Here's an interesting paper that some of you may have seen in J. Med. Chem.: "Heteroaromatic Rings of the Future". That's an odd title, but an appropriate one. For the non-chemists in the crowd who made it to this paragraph,... 74041@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Chemical News 2009-08-27T09:46:38-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/08/26/thalidomide_for_myeloma_whose_idea_was_it.php So, if you're a patient with a rare disease (or a relative of a patient with one), and you have an idea for repurposing an old drug for treatment. . .and you get a company interested, and it actually works.... 74040@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Cancer 2009-08-26T10:46:20-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/08/19/drug_companies_are_polar_bears_maybe_not.php There's an interesting article up over at InVivoBlog, and I wanted to see what the readership here thought of its main premise. Subtracting out the cute ecological analogies (Big Pharma as polar bears, for example), you get to this: .... 74027@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Business and Markets 2009-08-19T07:40:24-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/08/14/spraypainted_for_success.php I do a lot of talking around here about how the general public doesn't really have a good idea of what goes on inside a drug company. But a conversation with a colleague has put me to thinking that this... 74016@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Drug Development 2009-08-14T07:48:47-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/08/10/pharmas_return_on_investment_yikes.php There's a recent article in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery that has some alarming figures in it. This is yet another look at the industry from McKinsey, and we'll get to their McKinseyish solutions in a moment. But first, some numbers:... 74005@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Drug Development 2009-08-10T06:28:07-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/07/31/where_drugs_come_from_and_how_once_more_with_a_roll_of_the_eyes.php I linked yesterday to a post by Megan McArdle about health care reform. And while I realize that everyone got into a shouting match in the comments to my own post on the subject - and people sure did in... 73997@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Academia (vs. Industry) 2009-07-31T08:42:43-05:00 http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/07/20/amyloid_in_trouble.php Here's an interesting look at the current state of the Alzheimer's field from Bloomberg. The current big hope is Wyeth (and Elan)'s bapineuzumab, which I last wrote about here. That was after the companies reported what had to be considered... 73986@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/ Alzheimer's Disease 2009-07-20T20:58:02-05:00