Novo's time to shine

Yesterday the FDA approved a potential blockbuster diabetes drug manufactured by Novo Nordisk after a very lengthy 21 month review period. The medication is called Victoza and it represents a new class of treatments for diabetes that work by stimulating insulin release from pancreatic cells. This may not seem like a novel idea, but Victoza only stimulates insulin release when blood sugar levels are high, which is a significant functional improvement over other diabetes treatments. Expect Novo to benefit for a long time from this medication, not only in terms of US sales but worldwide, as the drug is already approved in Europe and Japan.

Read more about the approval and Victoza here

What happens when two big pharma companies merge? Well you get lots of job cuts and a bigger-than=necessary development pipeline. That's exactly what happened with Pfizer, so the pharma giant announced that it was chopping 100 drugs in development from it's pipeline...trimming the fat if you will. Look for Pfizer to continue to make cuts as it concentrates on only a few different therapeutic areas with larger numbers of biologics and vaccines, compounds that are expensive to develop yet extremely profitable once approved...

The LA Times discusses the culling here

Finally with the Obama administration came a new FDA. Well, after a year or so of the new FDA leadership it seems that drug manufacturers are taking fewer risks with advertising aimed directly at consumers (DTC ads, as they're known). There have been several examples of the FDA sending out scathing warning letters to manufacturers identifying the promotion of incorrect or misleading drug information directly to patients. It seems that the rest of industry has learned from those companies that fell on the FDA's sword, and you can expect to see even fewer ads on TV, the radio, and other forms of mass media as we breeze through 2010...

Bloomberg writes on the topic in this article