Pharmaceutical Industry

Pfizer Inc. would pay about $68 billion to acquire Wyeth in a bid reviewed Sunday by boards for the two drug companies, according to people familiar with the talks. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported that the deal could be announced before the markets open today. Wyeth shareholders would get $50.19, including $33 in cash and 0.985 Pfizer shares, one source said. That's a 29% premium on Wyeth's price Thursday, before word of the talks became public.

They have four legs, fuzzy faces and udders full of milk. To the uninitiated, they look like dairy goats. To GTC Biotherapeutics Inc., they're cutting-edge drug-making machines. The goats being raised on a farm in central Massachusetts are genetically engineered to make a human protein in their milk that prevents dangerous blood clots from forming. The company extracts the protein and turns it into a medicine that fights strokes, pulmonary embolisms and other life-threatening conditions.

Abbott Laboratories has won U.S. approval to sell a new pill to lower cholesterol alone or in combination with other medicines. The Food and Drug Administration cleared the product, called TriLipix, the Abbott Park, Ill., company said Monday. The medicine has been shown in studies to reduce artery-clogging cholesterol and fat in patients' blood when used with blood-thinning drugs called statins, such as Pfizer Inc.'s Lipitor and Merck & Co.'s Zocor.

DaVita Inc., the operator of dialysis centers, received a subpoena from U.S. authorities in Georgia investigating the administration of anemia drugs and vitamin D to kidney patients. DaVita, based in El Segundo, will produce "a wide range of documents" concerning Abbott Laboratories' Zemplar, Amgen Inc.'s Epogen, Daiichi Sankyo Co.'s Venofer, Genzyme Inc.'s Hectorol and Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s Ferrlecit, according to a statement. DaVita said it was working with officials from the U.S. attorney's office for the northern district of Georgia and the Health and Human Services Department's Office of Inspector General.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Sanofi-Aventis won an appeals court ruling Friday that will help them block generic competition to the blood thinner Plavix, the world's No. 2 selling-drug, in the U.S. until 2011. Bristol-Myers and Sanofi said that as a result of the ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, they will seek reimbursement from Canadian drug maker Apotex Inc.

The top staff regulators who oversaw the approval of new drugs in this country objected to the Bush administration's drive to shield drug makers from being sued, according to internal documents released Wednesday by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The regulators said the White House and top administration officials were operating under the "false assumption" that warning labels on new drugs were adequate and up-to-date.

A prominent Emory University psychiatrist received at least $2.8 million in consulting fees from companies whose drugs he was evaluating and failed to report a third of it, congressional investigators studying medical conflicts of interest said Friday. The allegations against Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff, the latest in a series of such charges, are the most striking to emerge from the probe, which seems likely to alter the cozy relationships between prominent academics and the drug industry.

Pfizer Inc. is shifting its drug research focus to diseases that have high potential for big profits and for treatment improvements in such fields as cancer and Alzheimer's disease. The world's biggest drug maker also is ending new research on conditions including obesity and heart disease, but research on drugs already in late-stage human testing will continue, spokeswoman Liz Power said Tuesday.

Federal health regulators said Friday that they were reviewing an experimental use of blockbuster anemia drugs made by Amgen Inc. and Johnson & Johnson that have been associated with higher death rates in a study involving stroke patients. This month J&J reported results from a German trial in which more stroke patients treated with its drug Eprex died than those taking a placebo.

Bridget Robb was awakened last December by a powerful electric shock to her chest. "It was a jolt of electricity. It felt like being shot in the chest or being hit by lightning," said the 34-year-old mother from a Philadelphia suburb. She knew the cause of her agony. A device implanted in her chest was supposed to shock her, but only if her heart had quit. Instead, because of frayed wires, it misfired 31 times in 13 minutes. She underwent two operations to replace the defective device, requiring months of recovery.