Pfizer

Who loves puppies more? Merck or Pfizer? Both global pharmaceutical giants have animal-health divisions, but they are considering different paths. Merck Inc. just announced that it was bringing a Philly guy home - sort of - to run its animal kingdom, and chief executive officer Ken Frazier (another Philly guy) highlighted the unit's results in his opening statement to investment analysts when discussing second-quarter results. Pfizer Inc. said it was exploring the sale or spin-off of its animal unit and its human-nutrition division.

Maybe the 15 women chatting over coffee at the Wegmans supermarket cafe in Malvern should start their own pharmaceutical firm. They have the brain power, if not the capital. A scientist who spent 19 years in drug development sat a few tables away from a coordinator of clinical trials. A few managed pharmaceutical finances, and one administered a $2.7 billion global research and development budget. One handled drug pricing and another edited marketing materials. The former human resources person squeezed in next to the woman who once worked in supply logistics.

Men of a certain need must spend more money for more years after a federal judge sided with drugmaker Pfizer Inc. as it tried to fend off a generic version of its erectile-dysfunction drug Viagra in a patent-protection lawsuit. The suit pitted two of the world's biggest drugmakers - Pfizer and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., both of which have local operations - against each other. Pfizer is the global leader in pharmaceutical sales, and Teva leads the pack in generic drugs, which now account for about 75 percent of the market.

GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. and Pfizer Inc. have sued generic drug giant Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. for allegedly infringing a U.S. patent for the HIV drug Epzicom, Bloomberg News reported. All three companies have large operations in the Philadelphia region. Glaxo and Pfizer have a joint venture, ViiV Healthcare, which makes Epzicom. Teva applied to the Food and Drug Administration to sell a generic version of Epzicom, ViiV lawyers said in a complaint filed in federal court in Wilmington, Del., Bloomberg said.

In the Region J&J blames staff cuts in drug recalls Johnson & Johnson's flood of product recalls last year stemmed from poor management, staffing cuts, and breakdowns in integrating the consumer unit it bought from Pfizer Inc., the New Brunswick, N.J., drugmaker said in court papers. Top executives, though, aren't to blame, J&J said in the filing. The report by a special committee of company board members, filed in response to investor lawsuits, said the McNeil Consumer Healthcare division, based in Fort Washington, suffered from "an adversarial relationship" between some quality-control and production staff as well as "an emphasis on production volume" over compliance.

NEW YORK - Pfizer Inc. said Thursday it may sell its animal health and nutrition business in the next two years so it can focus on expanding its low-cost pharmaceuticals unit. Pfizer, which has faced pressure to eliminate some business units and return more cash to shareholders, said the moves will allow investors to get more value for the businesses. The company will also consider transactions including spinoffs and may pursue different strategies for each business. Any transactions could take one to two years to complete, Pfizer said.

Patent protection and product pipelines are top priorities for every pharmaceutical manufacturer, which is why Pfizer Inc. and Teva Pharmaceuticals International Ltd. will be in federal court in Norfolk, Va., starting Wednesday as Pfizer fights to keep exclusive rights to Viagra through 2019. Pfizer sells about $1 billion worth of the little blue pills per year in the United States to help men with erectile dysfunction, amounting to about 2 1/2 percent of the company's sales. Along with other pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer has been fretting because some top-selling drugs are nearing the dates at which generic-pharmaceutical firms can produce and sell similar products for less money.

The good news is that some pharmaceutical companies now disclose payments they make to doctors for speaking engagements or consulting and to researchers, hospitals, and other medical institutions for clinical studies. The bad news is that each company discloses the information differently. That will change as part of the overhaul of the nation's health insurance system, but we won't see the results of that until 2013. For now, we'll need to make do with nonstandard disclosures, such as those released by GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C.

Big Pharma has been shedding all sorts of assets in recent years - human as well as intellectual property. While that poses big risks for an area like Philadelphia that is home to so many large pharmaceutical companies, it can be an opportunity for new company formation. An announcement last week involving brand-name GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. and no-name AltheRx Inc. shows how. Backed by a single, unidentified private investor, AltheRx acquired solabegron, a compound that GlaxoSmithKline had been studying as a treatment for overactive bladder in women and irritable-bowel syndrome.