Just when things appeared to be going well for Merck, the US FDA has dismissed Cordaptive, its drug for cholesterol treatment. Based on the age old mutli-vitamin drug niacin, Cordaptive had showed promised to emerge as the next billion dollar brand. Read more on this setback in this beautifully written Businessweek article.  

Glaxo snapped up Sirtris to augment its capabilities for future pharmaceutical sciences. Get a low down in this excellent Forbes piece.

The anti-rabies vaccine that became the issue of battle for Novartis and Aventis (Sanofi) will now go to an arbitrator.  I had wanted to get into the case but blame it on the hundreds of news/issues that haunted me over the last one year.  

Read this link for more. And I will start tracking it immediately to update on this interesting case.

So the mystery is finally over !

Solrex is Ranbaxy’s company officially and Orchid had to strike a deal with Ranbaxy to ward-off a takeover threat. The deal works for both but how well ? We have to wait for some time to know that.

All that we know is that several products and several geographies will reap the benefit of the two companies working in tandem.  The synergies will appear very cliched if we discuss this again here, so its good to skip that part.

It will be interesting to know the revenue sharing parameters, the fall-out of the deal on Orchid’s partners in the US and how soon do the upsides come into effect.

Indeed, all is well that ends well. But, Ranbaxy’s Malvinder Singh also said that he will look at a domestic consolidation in two to three year time frame. Remember SRK in OSO saying, “Abhi Toh Picture Baaki Hai,” meaning “Wait, The movie is not over yet.”

There are blips that keep coming to big pharmaceutical companies. Sometimes drugs fail in the last mile, sometimes US FDA comes down heavily on safety issues and sometimes sales fall due to competition. Pfizer is confronted with all of this in one blow.

Lipitor numbers are dwindling, may be for Vytorin-Zetia setback or could be because of Zocor generic but Lipitor is “Life” for the world’s largest medicine maker. Chantix is performing slightly below the expected numbers and yet again there is a small biotech buyout. 

Testing times for Pfizer indeed and the entire world is watching to see what it does to come out of the bad patch.