Author: Ian Mason

Eisai has officially launched Halaven in the UK, just a week after production of the novel breast cancer treatment started at the company’s £600 million manufacturing facility at Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

There were brickbats a-plenty for big pharma at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases meeting in Milan, Italy, with drugmakers being criticised for their poor performance in the antibiotics R&D field.

Having had no new drugs for hepatitis C since ribavirin’s approval more than a decade ago, doctors will shortly be spoilt for choice.

Boehringer Ingelheim says that data, due to be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in a couple of weeks, shows that the company’s BIBW 2992 shrank tumours in 22% of patients with head and neck cancer (measured as partial response), compared to 13% of those receiving Erbitux (cetuximab).

Ahead of the eagerly-awaited American Society of Clinical Oncology event being held next month in Chicago, a pre-meeting briefing included studies showing that maintenance therapy with Roche/Biogen Idec’s Rituxan halves risk of lymphoma recurrence, while Celgene’s Revlimid slows myeloma progression.