QDIS Blog

Since I use Ambien on occasion it was good to hear Dr. Reddy’s Lab is no approved to sell generic Ambien.

Dr. Reddy’s Gets Generic Ambien Approval - Forbes.com:

I was actually behind someone at my local pharmacy recently and they were concerned they thought they had been given the wrong prescription since they did not recognize the name. The pharmacist explained that it was the generic version of Ambien. This could be a big blow to Sanofi-Aventis since they had sales of $1.2 billion in the last year.

While Dr. Reddy’s Lab is the first, there will be several others and the competition will bring down the price. At least 10 other companies have approved generic versions.

Both my wife and I use it on occasion and I love it. I especially use it when traveling to get my body in sync with the local time. I should note that it has recently come under scrutiny and the labeling has been strengthened to warn about possible side effects.

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Seems my old company is now paying $10.5 million to resolve claims that they were promoting Trisenox for uses that were not approved.

Cell Therapeutics to pay $10.5 million:

I always thought they were leaving them selves open for this sort of problems back when I was working for them given the huge amount of off-label use. When a huge portion of your drug is being used for diseases it isn’t approved for, you are going to raise some eyebrows.

I should note that “Cell Therapeutics does not admit any wrongdoing in the matter”. And we all know what that really means.

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Express scripts is now reporting that in five eyars, by 2012, biotech drugs will account for 25% of all expenditures on drugs. The market was $54 billion in 2006 and is expected to reach $99 billion by 2010.

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Business > Biotechnology — Spending on biotech drug prescriptions rising:

I think this shows you why so many big pharma companies are either buying or investing in biotech. Also, since there is currently no biogenerics industry and regulation is only now starting to be worked on it is no wonder.

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