BrainBlog

From FierceBiotech : Merck KGaA pulls ahead in hot oral MS drug race By John Carroll September 11, 2009 — 8:22am ET Researchers for Merck KGaA say that new analysis of the late-stage data for their oral drug cladribine highlight the drug's potential as a new therapy for multiple sclerosis. Patients taking a short course of the therapy were more likely to go two years without seeing the disease flare up, and that could prove crucial for the developer as it prepares to make its case that cladribine should be neurologists' preferred choice among a slate of experimental oral MS therapies. Read the full article

A report from BusinessWeek from 27 August 2009: Drug, Biotech Research Spending Hangs Tough Overall U.S. corporate R&D spending is down 4% since the end of 2007, but some companies have chosen to buck the trend By Emily Thornton and Frederick Jespersen [snip] Corporate America's research spending shrank 4% overall, or $1.9 billion, from the fourth quarter of 2007 through the second quarter of this year, according to data compiled by Capital IQ on 961 U.S. companies. But many health-care companies have boosted their research outlays. BusinessWeek sought out 25 companies that most aggressively increased their research budgets during the first six months of 2009. Thirteen members of the group, which collectively boosted its spending by $2 billion, were pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Only eight were high-tech outfits, such as Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT). [snip] Read the full article