Pharma Blog Watch

Pfizer’s Failures — and Fight (for Lipitor) (CNBC’s Pharma’s Market)
In his blog, Mike Huckman writes about the latest bit of bad news for Pfizer, which has revealed it is stopping a late-stage trial for a skin cancer drug because it appears it will not work any better than chemotherapy.

“Pfizer has had a run of bad luck, if you can call it that, lately. It started in late 2006 when its hoped-for successor to Lipitor failed. Then, late last year it paid billions of dollars to get out of the new, unsuccessful inhalable diabetic insulin business. Then, early this year safety issues cropped out for its new stop-smoking drug Chantix. And now this,” Huckman writes.

Meanwhile, the company has begun running a new ad for Lipitor after data on Merck and Schering-Plough’s Vytorin/Zetia were released. “It’s a stark contrast to Pfizer’s recent Lipitor campaign with Dr. Robert Jarvik, the inventor of the artificial heart, that the company ended after the ads came under fire from several corners. So, perhaps [Pfizer] is going for a more science-driven, medical-driven look in the wake of that brouhaha,” Huckman adds.