This from The Wall Street Journal’s Pharmalot column yesterday:
“Timing, as they say, is everything. Yesterday, Merck executives were trumpeting their $8.4 billion deal to buy Cubist Pharmaceuticals CBST -0.44%, which they believe will help the drug giant push deeper into antibiotics and accelerate a strategy to provide a wider palette of treatments in acute hospital care. Cubist is one of a few companies that specialize in drugs to treat infectious diseases, primarily in hospital settings. Today, Merck is scrambling to reassure investors that the move makes sense after a federal judge yesterday afternoon invalidated four of five patents on Cubicin, an antibiotic that generated $967 million in sales last year and accounted for about 80% of Cubist sales, mostly in the U.S. The ruling means that generic versions can become available in 2016, at least two years earlier than expected.”
The full story here:
blogs.wsj.com/pharmalot/2014/12/ … nt-ruling/
Look’s like Merck’s much-deserved bad karma is taking root.
