Merck

A photo caption in Sunday's Arts & Entertainment section misidentified the two actresses pictured. Grace Gonglewski is at left, Mary Martello at right. An article Sunday about Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical company, misidentified the Merck & Co. drug Januvia. It is a prescription pill for diabetes. The Inquirer wants its news report to be fair and correct in every respect, and regrets when it is not. If you have a question or comment about news coverage, contact assistant managing editor David Sullivan (215-854-2357)

Merck & Co. Inc. reported a 67 percent profit increase Friday for the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2011, but the number was helped by cost-cutting and absence of a big charge from a year ago. The global drugmaker, which is based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., and has big operations in the Philadelphia suburbs, got the profit increase in part by spending less. "We're trying to manage our cost structure going forward," Merck chief executive officer Ken Frazier said in a conference call with Wall Street analysts.

IN THE REGION Merck fines total $950M for Vioxx Merck & Co. was fined $321.6 million by U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris in Boston following the company's December guilty plea to one misdemeanor count related to its promotion and marketing of the painkiller Vioxx, the Justice Department said. In November, Merck settled civil charges, for which it agreed to pay $628.4 million over additional allegations regarding off-label marketing of Vioxx and false statements about the drug's cardiovascular safety.

Merck & Co. is trying to improve its place in the cholesterol drug market but its latest attempt faces another hurdle. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, according to Merck, said the company needed to provide more data before the agency could further consider an application for a new drug that combines Merck's cholesterol drug Zetia and a generic version of Pfizer Inc.'s Lipitor. So many people's arteries are clogged with cholesterol-produced plaque that drug companies are looking for ways to retain revenue from established drugs, ward off generic competitors, and try new combinations that might yield future profits.

NEW YORK - Drugmaker Merck & Co. Inc. will pay $950 million to resolve investigations into its marketing of the painkiller Vioxx, the Justice Department said Tuesday. The agency said Merck, which has major operations in the Philadelphia region, would pay $321.6 million in criminal fines and $628.4 million as a civil settlement agreement. It also will plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge that it marketed Vioxx as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis before getting Food and Drug Administration approval.

Dr. Sanford "Sandy" P. Sher, of Chestnut Hill, a retired medical-information specialist for Merck & Co. Inc. and a community activist, died of heart failure at Chestnut Hill Hospital, Sunday, Nov. 13, three days after his 84th birthday. Dr. Sher graduated from Bronx High School of Science in New York. He earned a bachelor's degree and a medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis. He was on the medical-information staff of Smith Kline & French, now GlaxoSmithKline, in Philadelphia when he met his future wife, Dena Gibbs.

ONE ASPECT of the Penn State child-sex-abuse case has come full circle. In 2000, a janitor was the first person to say he witnessed former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky abusing a young boy, according to the grand-jury report that led to Sandusky's arrest on charges that he abused eight boys over a nearly 10-year period. On Friday, Penn State's Board of Trustees named trustee Kenneth Frazier, president and chief executive of the pharmaceutical firm Merck, to lead a committee investigating how the alleged assaults continued even after another man, a former graduate assistant, reported to coach Joe Paterno that he had seen Sandusky abusing a boy in the locker room in 2002.