Eisai and Pfizer lose case against NICE to supply drugs to those with early-stage Alzheimer's disease
Oct 1, 2007
By:
Sarah Houlton
A landmark court case in the United Kingdom has left Alzheimer's patients with mild to moderate disease unable to receive any of the three drugs that might help them—Aricept (donepezil), Reminyl (galantamine), and Exelon (rivastigmine). Eisai and Pfizer, which make and market Aricept, had challenged the ruling made last year by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence that the drugs should be prescribed only to patients in the later stages of the disease. They were granted a judicial review—the first time one of NICE's decisions had been challenged in this way—and while the judge upheld one part of the challenge, the other two parts were dismissed and NICE's guidance stands.
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The British pharma organization challenges the government's call for specific statin switches
Sep 1, 2007
By:
Sarah Houlton
The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry is challenging the UK government over the financial incentives being offered by the Department of Health (DH) to encourage doctors to switch patients from on-patent medicines to specific generic alternatives. ABPI believes the way the incentives are structured contravenes EU law—if pharma companies were to offer similar payments, they would be in serious trouble.
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Patients are losing the battle against bacteria. Can pharma be convinced to swing the sword of new antibiotic development?
Jul 30, 2007
By:
Sarah Houlton
Scare stories about antibiotic-resistant bacteria are all too common in the mass media these days. In the United Kingdom alone, the number of deaths from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus almost doubled between 2001 and 2005 to more than 2,000. The situation with Clostridium difficile is even worse, with UK deaths tripling to almost 4,000 over the same period. The big problem is that the incidence is growing, yet few antibiotics are being developed that will be able to kill the resistant bacteria.
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Jul 25, 2007
By:
Sarah Houlton
UK pharma company offers to pick up the tab
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Jul 25, 2007
By:
Sarah Houlton
Tainted batches of Viracept pulled from European shelves.
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There seems to be no race for the cure in the United Kingdom. Will cancer networks fill the gap?
Jul 3, 2007
By:
Sarah Houlton
Says Roche UK CEO John Melville: "There is little difference in the incidence of cancer, in broad terms, across Europe, but cancer survival is very different"
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Pfizer's move to consolidate its drug supply chain in the United Kingdom may signal safer—but more expensive—drugs
Jun 1, 2007
By:
Sarah Houlton
Stakeholders worry that less competition among drug suppliers in the United Kingdom could mean higher prices and a bigger bill for the National Health Service
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Will the EC's upcoming drug-safety plan be just what the doctor ordered or end up an indecent proposal?
May 1, 2007
By:
Sarah Houlton
It's not always obvious just who is reponsible for the various steps of pharmacovigilance.
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Under the UK's pricing scheme, drug prices have dropped by 21 percent in 10 years. Is it really time for a change?
Apr 1, 2007
By:
Sarah Houlton
If the uk's office of fair trading (OFT) is to be believed, Brits are overpaying for their medicines to the tune of ?500 million a year. That's the conclusion the OFT came to in its long-awaited report on the Pharmaceutical Pricing Regulation Scheme (PPRS), the arcane method by which drug prices are set in the United Kingdom.
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