QDIS Blog

This news is somewhat dated now but the M&A activity in the pharmaceutical industry continues. Now AsraZeneca is purchasing Medimmune for $15.6 billion.

AstraZeneca to buy MedImmune for $15.6B - Yahoo! News

The two main products of interest are the children’s respiratory drug Synagis and a refrigerated version of FluMist inhaled influenza vaccine. This follows the current trend of major pharma increasing interest in vaccines. Novartis purchased Chiron and both Sanofi-Aventis and GlaxoSmithKline have sizable vaccine businesses.

MedImmune had until recently, actively resisted any such take-over moves. I’m not sure why they finally relented and went forward with AstraZeneca. Maybe they finally got the price they wanted.

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It isn’t surprising that the FDA rejected Merck’s NDA for Arcoxia, its follow on to Vioxx since an advisory committee already voted 20-1 against its approval. Forbes has an article on it.

FDA Rejects Merck’s Vioxx Successor - Forbes.com:

It is interesting to note though that Arrcoxia is on sale in 63 countries world-wide already. It be be interesting to see what effect if any it has on world-wide sales.

Technorati Tags: Arcoxia, Merck, Vioxx

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