Use of generic medicines plans to save money..

The proposals of an increase to make generic medicines in primary care cheaper have been set out of England.

Generic Medicines are less cost effective than a branded equivalent and the Department of health is keen to use them.

Many suggestions contain establishing a list of products for replacement and another list of items that would be excused.

The proposals will be made known for public consultation over the next 3 months. The NHS spends around £9bn a year on branded prescription medicines in the UK.

A 5 year voluntary agreement negotiated between government and the pharmaceutical industry last year, includes measures aimed at reducing NHS expenses on branded medicines by an average of 5% a year over the lifetime of the plan.

Generic medicines - which have to include the same active ingredient as the branded originals, and can be sold once the originator’s patent protection has expired - can save substantial costs.

Currently, around 83% of prescriptions issued by the NHS are for generic drugs, but ministers want this to rise by around 5%.

Blaze at Mersey chemicals plant

A FIRE started at a chemicals factory in Knowsley early this morning.

Firefighters have said that the blaze may cause the whole area being evacuated.

Two crews from Kirkby Fire Station took on the fire at Contract Chemicals, on Knowsley Business Park, Prescot, around midnight after security guards raised the alarm.

The fire was in the manufacturing site’s main vent and piping which was caused by a faulty extractor fan.

A firefighter who was at the scene called the incident a “close call” and said the blaze could have led to a “cloudburst” operation – declared after major accidents like chemical leaks.

Under these tight guidelines, people are normally ordered to stay indoors, evacuated or exclusion zones set up.

One firefighter said: “We stopped the fire from moving to the main building and narrowly avoided a cloudburst situation, which could have led to the area being evacuated.

“It was a very close call because of all the chemicals in there.”

Contract Chemicals supply chemicals for the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries, as well as detergents and fragrances.

Andy Bailey, Kirkby Fire Station, said: “Fortunately there was no need for a cloudburst situation. They had people on site and we dealt with it quite rapidly.”

Cardinal Health announces new board member

Cardinal Health has announced the date of new board member Carrie Cox.

Ms Cox will begin her position on the board right away, the organisation exposed.

She has before taken such posts as executive vice-president and president of global pharmaceuticals at Schering-Plough and president of Pharmacia’s global pharmaceutical company.

Subsequent to the end of Schering-Plough’s merger with Merck in November, Ms Cox’s contract with the past corporation came to an end.

George Barrett, chairman and chief executive officer of Cardinal Health, believed that the firm is “excited” to be welcoming Ms Cox and her knowledge to the company.

“Carrie brings an extraordinary range of experiences from her 30 years in biopharmaceuticals and healthcare,” he said.

Hanningfield Christmas Closure

Dear Customers, Associates and Suppliers,

Hanningfield Process Systems will be closed over the Christmas period from Wednesday 23rd December 2009 until Monday 4th January 2010. Please direct any enquiries or contact through our enquiry form or our e-mail address. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank you for your cooperation and custom this year and hope that 2010 is both prosperous and enjoyable.

We wish everyone and their families a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year!

FROM EVERYONE AT HANNINGFIELD PHARMACEUTICAL

WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS

AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

AND HOPE TO SEE AND HEAR FROM YOU IN THE NEW YEAR!!

China Pediatric Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Announces Change in Stock Symbol

China Pediatric Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that effective from December 14, 2009, the Company altered its stock symbol from LHSI to CPDU and finished a 2-for-7 turn around split of its Common Stock.

Effective from October 14, 2009, the business filed a modification to our Articles of Incorporation with the Secretary of State of Nevada to offer for a seven old common shares for two new common shares reverse share split. No fractional shares will be issued in association with the adaptation; instead, China Pediatric Pharmaceuticals will round up the fractional share to the nearest whole number.

“We are very pleased to announce our new stock symbol. We are also delighted to announce the completion of the reverse stock split which represents an important step forward in our near-term goal to position China Pediatric Pharmaceuticals to list our common stock on a senior stock market in the US,” said Mr. Xia, CEO and Chairman of China PediatricPharmaceuticals, Inc

Glaxo Have ‘Paid’ $1 Billion in Paxil Suits

GlaxoSmithKline Plc has paid almost $1 billion to decide lawsuits over Paxil since it introduced the antidepressant in 1993, plus about $390 million for suicides or attempted suicides said to be linked to the drug, says court records and people common with the cases.

As part of the sum, Glaxo, the U.K.’s largest drugmaker, so far has paid $200 million to settle Paxil habit and birth-defect cases and $400 million to end antitrust, fraud and design claims, coming from the people and court records.

The $1 billion “would be worse than many people are expecting,” said Navid Malik, an analyst at Matrix Corporate Capital in London. “I don’t think this is within the boundaries of current assumptions for analysts.”

The London-based company hasn’t told of the agreement total in business filings. It has made public some accords. Glaxo’s provision for legal and other non-tax disputes as of the end of 2008 was 1.9 billion pounds ($3.09 billion), apparent in its latest annual report. This integrated all legal matters, not just Paxil. The company said 112 million pounds of this sum would be “reimbursed by third-party issuers.”

The drugmaker has condensed its insurance coverage to contain costs, “accepting a greater degree of uninsured exposure,” the annual report states. “Recent insurance loss experience, including pharmaceutical product-liability exposures, has increased the cost of, and narrowed the coverage afforded by, insurance for pharmaceutical companies generally,” Glaxo said.

Pharmaceutical step up on health care bill

The Senate will continue debate Monday afternoon on a popular suggestion to allow U.S. citizens to purchase cheaper drugs from distant countries, which led to a last-minute lobbying push by drug makers last week and bogged down discussions over a heath-care improvement bill.

The offer is one of numerous intense disputes that provoked a surge in lobbying by hospitals, insurers and other major industries attempting to persuade the legislation in their favor as lawmakers work through a handful of difficult issues. Medical providers, for example, are battling hard against a planned Democratic concession that would jettison a public insurance option in favor of a limited development of Medicare, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce flew dozens of corporate executives to Capitol Hill to meet with lawmakers.

The fight over the imported drugs pitch poses a predominantly difficult biased challenge for President Obama, who co-sponsored a similar bill when he was in Congress and who included support for the idea in his first budget.

But the pharmaceutical industry — which has been a key follower of health-care reform after getting an agreement with the White House earlier this year — has responded with a severe lobbying campaign aimed at killing the suggestion, focusing on Democratic senators from states with large drug and investigate sectors.

Pharmaceutical Society unimpressed over cocaine issue

The President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana, Dr. Alex Doodo, has severely criticized the Police Service for the unethical conduct put up by some of its personnel who carried out a search at the Spintex Road warehouse of Kinapharma, a Pharmaceutical Company, and its subsequent ordering of a hunt and taking chemicals for further study, all in bid to hang a “cocaine-dealing” noose around the neck of three managers of the company.

He has also urged the media to use a bit of caution in their reportage and not be too hasty in taking out conclusions about cases under police investigations.

“The pharmacy society can be viewed as having an interest in the story, …In doing their routine job, they (police) must be seen to be fair, but most importantly, how stories get to the newspapers is indeed worrying,” he said.

The police has been getting a lot of criticism recently following specific acts of unprofessionalism exhibited by some of its personnel and this latest messed up hunt for narcotics at Kinapharma, based on a warning, seems to be high point of their amateurism, particular when Kinapharma is demanding an official apology from the Police with plans of even initiating a law suit against the Service.

In an interview with Kwami Sefa Kayi on PEACEFM’s “Kokrokoo”, Dr. Doodo articulated worry about the tainting of Kinapharma’s image with cocaine by the police officials, particularly when field tests had proved questionable.

“The story has really worried the pharmaceutical society and there is a need to guard the industry from any intruder…Kinapharma is a big localpharmaceutical industry…, and it is really vital that not just Kinapharma, but Ernest Chemists, Tobinco, Kama and all the local industry players are accorded the needed respect and decorum…,” he said.

According to him, “If you go to a Pharmaceutical Company, you will always find white powder, because most powders are white,” pointing out that that is not indicative of illicit drug trade.

More reasearch & development back by Darling

Chancellor Alistair Darling has said he wants more research and development in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, allowing a new 10 pence less corporation tax on income which comes from patents in the UK.

The government is also working with the Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK and University College London to reach “the largest institute in Europe for research into long term medical challenges”, the chancellor said.

During the speech, chancellor Alistair Darling said that the pre-Budget report would give the vision of “building a fairer society and securing opportunity for all”.

Darling said that he was “confident that the UK economy will start growing by the turn of the year”. He is sticking to his previous Budget forecast of economic growth of 3.5 per cent in the UK in 2011-12.

But also added: “We can’t be complacent. We must continue to support the economy until recovery is established.”

This year, public sector investment reached a 30-year high, he says.

Sir Tom McKillop returns to Pharmaceutical Industry

Previous banker Sir Tom McKillop has been given a new £54,000-a-year job.

The past chairman of RBS, Sir Tom has come back to thepharmaceutical industry, which he worked for many years and how he earned his knighthood in 2002.

Sir Tom will sit beside a Belgian prince and other European luminaries on the board of directors for pharmaceutical giant UCB, after taking up his position at an astonishing general meeting on 6 November.

As chairman of RBS, Sir Tom watched over the lead-up to the major corporate failure in UK history, and even apologized to a House of Commons Treasury select committee for RBS’s failure. He also come out about having no qualifications in banking.

The panel of directors for UCB – including Prince Lorenz of Belgium – met just seven times in 2008, and Sir Tom will be salaried £900 for each meeting he attends this year, on top of a base pay of £54,000.

A spokeswoman for the firm was reported as saying that Sir Tom was selected for his “great knowledge in the pharmaceutical world”.

Pharmaceutical Company get £15m Financing Deal

Nymox Pharmaceutical Corp. said Thursday it has obtained a pledge for $15 million financing from investors.

The money will be used for general group purposes. The financing also will help the business keep on with research into new drugs including one called NX-1207, which could treat an swollen prostate.

The investors may get common stock at a 3% reduction to the market price, the company said.

The timing and quantity of each placement is in the sole maturity of the company. There are no warrants, price resets, and no limits on other corporate financing.

Products currently marketed by Nymox include tests for measuring tobacco product exposure sold under the NicAlert and TobacAlert names and a test to aid in the analysis of Alzheimer’s disease.

Drugs company pledges £10m to increase testing at the Olympics

GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug-maker, will build a £10 million laboratory to test thousands of athletes during the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics under a sponsorship deal announced yesterday by London organisers.

It is the first time that an anti-doping programme at an Olympic Games has been sponsored and it will raise eyebrows that it has been supported by a pharmaceutical company.
The cost of running an independent lab required by the IOC to analyse blood and urine samples from competitors has previously been covered by the local organising committee.
The deal was welcomed by anti-drugs campaigners for increasing the resources available to King’s College London, which has been involved in testing at two summer Games and has the contract for 2012, but raised concerns about the commercial interests of the world’s second biggest pharmaceutical company.

GSK will provide equipment and scientists to the lab, which will be accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) and operate from one of the company’s facilities in Hertfordshire or Essex.
David Cowan, the director of the college’s drug control centre, said that the deal would increase his capacity by between ten and 14 times in terms of the number of tests and the scientists at his disposal. More than 5,000 tests were conducted in Beijing last year. London organisers aim to test half of the 10,500 athletes competing at the Olympics and 1,500 athletes at the Paralympics.
“There is no way we could have done it with our existing facility,” he said. “I think this will be a winning solution and the higher volume of testing will act as a deterrent.”

The centre at King’s College conducted more than 8,000 tests across 70 sports last year as part of UK Sport’s anti-doping programme. Cowan stressed its independence from any pharmaceutical group. “There is a definite wall between us,” he said.

However, there are concerns about the potential influence of a company, some of whose products are made with ingredients banned by the IOC.
Substances on Wada’s prohibited list include salbutamol, which is permitted for asthma sufferers under an exemption. Its abuse by athletes as an alternative to clenbuterol, which reduces body fat, means it has been a prohibited substance. From 2010, however, the use of inhaled salbutamol — the key ingredient in Ventolin, GSK’s best-selling asthma treatment — will no longer be banned.
Michele Verroken, an international anti-doping expert, said the involvement of a pharmaceutical company in the anti-doping fight called for greater transparency in the decisions that lead to revisions of the banned list.

She said: “Anti-doping is a huge financial strain on sport so I welcome the extra resources, but I am uncomfortable that some of Glaxo’s products may end up with a more favourable status than others when it comes to therapeutic use exemptions.”
GSK denied that its support of the London 2012 drug-testing programme was commercially motivated. A spokesman said: “Our sponsorship prohibits any leverage of our brands. We cannot put the Olympic rings on Lucozade or Ribena bottles or any of our pharmaceutical products. A better scientific understanding is where our future vested interest is.”

Source: TIMES ONLINE

Drugs groups face increases in tax rates

Pharmaceutical companies are set to face "significant" increases in tax rates over the coming decade, as their businesses evolve and governments clamp down on avoidance, a leading tax adviser warns today.
In a report "Taxing times ahead", PwC says that rising public sector deficits and a shift in the strategy of pharmaceutical companies will intensify countries' efforts to clamp down on methods used by drugs groups to keep taxes low.
"For the past 20 years, pharma has benefited from a benign legislative and commercial environment that has enabled it to report low and stable tax rates," it said. "These elements are changing."
It said the trend by many large companies away from simply developing drugs to providing a broader range of healthcare services would reduce their ability to switch profits from high to low tax jurisdictions.
The pattern of cost cutting, improved research productivity, a broader mix of products, expansion in the emerging markets and offering "outcomes" rather than simply medicines will all have "major repercussions", it warned.
PwC said tax authorities were increasingly clamping down on "transfer pricing": the practice of shifting costs to higher tax regions and income to lower tax ones. They were also working more with their counterparts in other countries to reduce the ability to use crossborder transactions.
It cited more aggressive measures taken by the Internal Revenue Service in the US, and the measures adopted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to blacklist tax havens.

It said such measures would offset continued moves by some countries to offer tax advantages to encourage domestic research and development by large foreign companies.
The consultancy highlighted wide variations in corporation tax rates currently paid by the large drugs manufacturers, ranging from 29.3 per cent in 2008 for Bayer of Germany to as low as just 14 per cent for Novartis of Switzerland.

In the US, it showed that pharmaceuticals including biotechnology remained among the lowest taxed corporate sectors at 32.5 per cent. Among the large companies, the average effective rate last year was 23.8 per cent.

PwC said companies might shift their legal status from being corporations to partnerships, create regional hubs and manage value added tax centrally to minimise tax bills in future.

Source: FT.Com

Shire and Teva settle Adderall dispute

Pharmaceutical group Shire and Teva Pharmaceuticals USA have settled litigation concerning Shire's supply of a generic version of Adderall XR.

Shire has been supplying Teva with authorised generic Adderall XR since April 1 but its ability to supply the product was limited by US Drug Enforcement Administration restrictions on amphetamine, the product's active ingredient.

Teva filed suit claiming Shire was in breach of its supply contract. The DEA then granted Shire an additional quota for 2009, allowing it to supply Teva.

Teva has now dismissed its lawsuit, including its claim for damages. No consideration was exchanged as part of the settlement.

Story provided by Business Financial Newswire

Simcere Pharmaceutical suspends production at Yanshen unit because of quality control problems

Drug developer Simcere Pharmaceutical Group said Wednesday it suspended production at its Jiangsu Yanshen Biological Technology Stock Co. unit to conduct an internal inspection following the discovery of quality control problems.

Simcere said it discovered quality control issues at the unit after obtaining a controlling stake in October. Specifically, there were problems with the production of Yanshen’s human-use rabies vaccine.

American Depository Shares of the China-based drug developer closed at $8.03 Tuesday.

Source: LATimes

Local Pharmaceutical Sector Posts High Growth

In a troubled world economy and in a world threatened by the spread of epidemics, the Tunisian pharmaceutical sector which provides 50% of market needs in drugs and 60% in volume is posting a stronger growth.

The sector which comprised only 3 production units in 1987 boasts today 41 units (public and private) employing 3800 people, 37% of which are pharmacists reports the Tunisian daily newspaper “Le Temps”.These units produce locally 293 million dinars worth of medicine with 54% of licensed drugs and 46% of generic drugs.

The Tunisian pharmaceutical industry has been the focus of a cabinet meeting, held last week.
The meeting took initiatives aiming at achieving 60% of coverage of the domestic demand and boosting pharmaceutical exports by 2016.

Observers note that the growth of pharmaceutical industries in Tunisia, whose privatization started in 1989, is due to the setting up of a legal framework regulating the sector as well as fiscal and commercial incentives.
The sector imports medical products from European countries such as France, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, the UK and Germany worth 346 million dinars and exports pharmaceutical products worth 320 million dinars to such countries as Libya, Algeria, France and Morocco as well as Mauritania, Senegal, Jordan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Source: AllAfrica.com