Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

PFE – I thought this shocking headline was fake on first glance.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122273156729088223.html

›Pfizer to Abandon Heart-Drug Development

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008
By SHIRLEY S. WANG and JOANN S. LUBLIN

In a striking shift, Pfizer Inc. will abandon efforts to develop medicines for heart disease, as part of a broad research reshuffling it plans to announce Tuesday.

Pfizer will be leaving a field that includes its cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor and other medicines that fueled the company's dominance of the pharmaceutical industry for more than a decade.

The beleaguered New York pharmaceutical giant is also expected to announce it is exiting therapies for obesity and bone health, to focus on more-profitable areas, such as cancer.

The move is part of an ongoing plan to restructure into business units responsible for their own profits and losses. Job cuts and a reduction in research and development spending -- which at $8.1 billion last year was the highest in the industry -- are expected. Pfizer executives declined to disclose the size of any expense cuts.

"We still see the programs that we're stopping as having value," said Martin Mackay, Pfizer's head of research and development. "They're just not as valuable as other programs, like Alzheimer's or oncology." The company will seek partners to develop some of the compounds it is jettisoning.

The mega-blockbusters Lipitor, the world's top selling drug with sales of $12.7 billion in 2007, and Norvasc, a blood pressure medicine with $4.7 billion in sales in 2006 before losing patent protection last year, made Pfizer in the mid-1990s the king of cardiovascular drugs.

The company had banked on another cholesterol-lowering drug, called torcetrapib, to provide a new source of growth. But that drug failed in a major study in late 2006.

The company will continue to develop heart medicines in late-stage testing, including an anti-clotting drug being co-developing with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. [The drug referred to here is Apixaban, which has suffered some recent setbacks: #msg-32382362.]

Pfizer sees decentralized operations as boosting pipeline prospects and efficiency. "We're running the company with a real sense of urgency and accountability," said Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Kindler.

Drastic job cuts aren't imminent, according to two people familiar with the company's plans.‹