Drugmaker | featured news

It wasn't what you would call a casual get-together.  A popular New York blogger attended a brunch with fellow "frazzled moms." They took in tips from a style expert and listened to a nurse extol the virtues of Mirena, a birth control device sold by Bayer Healthcare.  The nurse was on Bayer's payroll.

Two pivotal trials of a Johnson & Johnson experimental HIV drug found it worked as well as an existing drug, with fewer side effects but also with nearly twice as many patients failing to respond to treatment.

Drugmaker Pfizer will cut 6,000, or 18 percent, of jobs at its 78 manufacturing plants over the next five years as it consolidates operations after  last year's purchase of  Wyeth.

With an overhaul, Congress would be giving the health care industry millions of customers in the next few years.

Pharmaceutical executives laid out plans Friday to prevent the misuse of prescription painkillers, under pressure from regulators trying to stop hundreds of fatal overdoses each year....

Cost-cutting at drug maker Pfizer helps it to increase third-quarter profits despite falling sales of its medicines.

Pfizer Inc.'s $68 billion purchase of Wyeth will close Thursday after antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Canada cleared the deal, which will make Pfizer the world's largest drugmaker by revenue.

Health care giant Johnson & Johnson is jumping into the increasingly hot vaccine business by taking an 18 percent stake in Dutch biotechnology company Crucell NV and focusing more on preventive medicine....

Belgian drugs, chemicals and plastics maker Solvay said on Monday it would sell its drugs unit to U.S. partner Abbott Laboratories for 4.5 billion euros ($6.61 billion) in cash and reinvest in chemicals and plastics.

Swiss drugmaker Novartis has begun injecting its swine flu vaccine into people in the company's first human tests, a spokesman said Wednesday.