In July, Pfizer and BioNTech initiated a late-stage clinical trial on a coronavirus vaccine. Half of the people got the vaccine, while the other half got a placebo of salt water. The companies then waited for people to get sick to determine if the vaccine offered any protection. So far, 94 participants out of nearly… Read More »
After Pfizer’s Ibrance failed a crucial study in HR-positive, HR-negative postsurgery breast cancer patients, the company clung to hope that it could still show a benefit in a high-risk subset of those patients. But new data have officially snuffed out those hopes. There’s “no saving adjuvant for Ibrance,” SVB Leerink analyst Geoffrey Porges wrote in… Read More »
Pfizer’s tafamidis arrived in the U.S. in 2019 with a vastly discounted list price over rival transthyretin amyloidosis drugs. But its $ 225,000-a-year tag still seems too much for many heart patients. Previous cost-effectiveness analyses and physicians themselves have warned tafamidis is too pricey—the world’s most expensive medication for cardiovascular disease, to be exact. And now,… Read More »
Pfizer’s aging Xalkori is the drug to beat in ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer arena. And that’s just the arena Takeda is aiming for with earlier use of its own treatment Alunbrig. After 25 months of treatment, Alunbrig cut the risk of disease progression by 51% compared with Xalkori in ALK inhibitor-naïve NSCLC, as assessed by… Read More »
AbbVie remained the top pharma TV ad spender with Humira in June, and Gilead Sciences continued its TV push for Biktarvy and Truvada. But one long-time list placeholder dropped out of sight: Pfizer’s Xeljanz spent no money on TV ads in June, according to data from real-time TV ad tracker iSpot.tv. That’s unusual for the rheumatoid arthritis and… Read More »
When former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., resigned back in March, he said he wanted to spend more time with his family. Since then, Gottlieb has nabbed a partnership at a VC firm and a think tank fellowship. And now, less than three months since his last day regulating pharma, Gottlieb has joined Pfizer, one… Read More »