OBB News Briefs

The Biotechnology Industry Organization CEO, Jim Greenwood, spoke with reporters and bloggers Thursday morning about follow-on biologics and patent reform. Mr. Greenwood sounded optimistic that a forthcoming bill sponsored by Reps. Eshoo and Barton will represent a reasonable compromise between earlier proposals that stalled in Congress last year. Patent Docs has two posts summarizing the call. The AP was there too.
The Federal Trade Commission announced Wednesday that it has sued Cephalon "for a course of anticompetitive conduct that is preventing competition to its branded drug Provigil." According to the FTC’s complaint, Cephalon paid four generic drug companies a total of more than $200 million to abandon their paragraph IV patent challenges. Cephalon responded with a press release. For more information, see: Antitrust Review; Pharmalot; and WSJ Health Blog.
Reuters reported Wednesday that AstraZeneca has no plans to settle its Hatch-Waxman cases concerning Nexium and Seroquel.
After the FDA announced Monday that Baxter’s heparin has been linked to severe allergic reactions, reports surfaced in the Wall St. Journal, New York Times and Capital Times implicating the Chinese plant that manufactures the drug’s active ingredient. Thursday, Pharmalot posted an interview with a Rutgers business professor, who thinks the pharmaceutical industry should stop doing business with China entirely.