Johnson & Johnson filed a lawsuit alleging that GlaxoSmithKline made unsupported claims about GSK’s allergy nasal spray Flonase at the expense of J&J drugs Benadryl and Zyrtec in its advertising. The lawsuit said J&J may be harmed “with the prime allergy sales season quickly approaching,” according to Reuters, and it requested an injunction. GSK launched the OTC version of Flonase in February.
Two out of three people with invasive cancer live for five years or longer after they have been diagnosed, a finding that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attributed in a new report to better detection and treatments. The best survival rates were in patients diagnosed with the most common cancers, such as prostate, breast and colorectal cancers, according to Medscape.
Bristol-Myers Squibb resubmitted its application for its HCV treatment for use in combination with Gilead Sciences’ Sovaldi. The company had withdrawn its original application, which had paired daclatasvir with another BMS drug, asunaprevir, over “potential competition from more potent drugs, leaving the FDA without data to gauge the effectiveness of daclatasvir as part of a combination regimen,” Reuters reported.
Pfizer’s pain drug Lyrica failed a post-market study that tested the pain in teens with fibromyalgia, the company said Thursday. There was no statistically significant difference between the drug and the placebo. Lyrica was the first FDA-approved drug to treat fibromyalgia when it received approval in 2007.
IMS Health paid its CEO Ari Bousbib $25.9 million last year, meaning he made more than the CEOs of Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, Bloomberg reported. Bousbib’s stock award was a one-time grant provided in advance of the company’s IPO. IMS went public in May, raising $1.3 billion.
