Content about Corporate crime

NEW YORK — Pfizer is buying the maker of an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drug for almost $700 million, Pfizer said Monday.

The drug maker announced that it would buy privately owned NextWave Pharmaceuticals, which makes the extended-release ADHD drug Quillivant XR (methylphenidate hydrochloride), which the Food and Drug Administration approved last month. The drug is expected to appear in pharmacies in January 2013.

HANGZHOU, China — Pfizer has inked a deal with a Chinese drug maker to make branded-generic drugs for China and global markets, the companies said.

NEW YORK — Pfizer's general counsel Amy Schulman has assumed the reigns to Pfizer's consumer healthcare business, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week.

Schulman replaces Cavan Redmond, who was named the CEO of WebMD Health.

Pfizer Consumer Healthcare president Paul Sturman, who directly oversees the day-to-day operations of the consumer division, will now report to Schulman.

NEW YORK — An experimental drug under development by Pfizer and a unit of Johnson & Johnson does not appear effective in Alzheimer's disease patients who carry a certain genotype, according to results of a late-stage clinical trial announced by Pfizer on Tuesday.

NEW YORK — An experimental drug made by Pfizer for a rare and fatal neurodegenerative disease got a favorable vote from a Food and Drug Administration expert panel.

The FDA's Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee voted 13-4 that the drug tafamidis meglumine would provide certain clinical benefits to patients with transthyretin familial amyloid polyneuropathy, or TTR-FAP, a hereditary disease that affects about 8,000 people worldwide. The FDA is not required to follow the recommendations of FDA advisory committees, but usually does.

NEW YORK — Pfizer apparently is relenting on its attempt to drive sales of its top cholesterol drug as several new generic versions look set to enter the market, according to published reports.

The Associated Press reported that Pfizer was "quietly" giving up on the drug Lipitor (atorvastatin) after an $87 million campaign to continue marketing the drug despite generic competition.

NEW YORK — Pfizer is selling its nutrition business to Nestlé for $11.85 billion, Pfizer said Monday.

Pfizer Nutrition, which had sales of about $2.1 billion in 2011, manufactures and markets nutrition products for children, including baby and toddler formulas, follow-on formulas and maternal and adult nutrition products.

CHICAGO — Drug maker Pfizer is taking a marketing campaign for one of its drugs to Walgreens' Chicago flagship store to raise awareness about high cholesterol and healthy eating, the company said Monday.

WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet on Thursday morning heard testimony regarding H.R. 1946, "Preserving Our Hometown Independent Pharmacies Act of 2011." Originally introduced by Reps. Tom Marino, R-Pa., and Louie Gahmert, R-Texas, the bill is intended to exempt independent pharmacists from antitrust regulation in an effort to bolster their negotiating powers with pharmacy benefit managers.

ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla. — A specialty pharmacy provider has begun selling a drug made by Pfizer for treating kidney cancer.

The company announced that it had launched Inlyta (axitinib), which the Food and Drug Administration approved last month for treating renal cell carcinoma in patients with advanced disease for whom first-line systemic therapy has failed. According to the American Cancer Society, 60,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with the disease each year, and 13,000 die.

PHOENIX — Managed care and prescription plans are working to switch patients to generic versions of Pfizer's Lipitor despite the drug maker's efforts to reduce costs for the branded version, a new study suggested.

According to a report released Wednesday by Wolters Kluwer Pharma Solutions' inThought research group, while Lipitor (atorvastatin) has 41% of the market share of all dispensed prescriptions of atorvastatin, it has 35% of the payer approval volume.