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Pharmalot.. Pharmalittle.. We’re catching up on Gilead, Theranos and…

sunrise thx to noel pennington on flickr creative commons [1]

sunrise thx to noel pennington on flickr creative commons

Top of the morning to you. And another fine one, it is. The sun is shining, the Pharmalot campus is blissfully quiet and more cups of stimulation are brewing in the Pharmalot cafeteria. All of which means that we are in the midst of yet another busy day. No doubt, you can relate. So time to dig in to the usual routine and, to help you along, we have assembled a few items of interest. Good luck, today, and of course, do keep in touch…

Theranos ceo Elizabeth Holmes plans to release a 16-page point-by-point rebuttal to articles in The Wall Street Journal that questioned the accuracy of its blood tests and the extent to its unique technology is used, The New York Times [2] writes. The document accuses the author of having an agenda that considered Theranos “a target to be taken down” and dissects the motivations of various people quoted in the articles.

Oh, say, can you see? An Illinois businessman is angry because his display of patriotism was removed from ads for a new cancer drug that are being run by Bristol-Myers Squibb, according to Fox News [3]. “I looked at that, and I said, “they photoshopped out the flag!” says Tom Roeser, whose firm, Otto Engineering, is featured in the ad. “They didn’t even act remorseful. They said, we did indeed take the flag out because, here is the law.”

Gilead Sciences is now known to be developing an experimental drug for Ebola after a London hospital revealed that the treatment had been given to a nurse who had been readmitted with the illness, The Guardian [4] reports. Pauline Cafferkey contracted Ebola in December while working in Sierra Leone. Earlier this week, doctors at the hospital upgraded her condition to serious but stable after she deteriorated to critically ill last week.

When states ran out of execution drugs, they started paying tens of thousands of dollars to Chris Harris, a salesman in India with no pharmaceutical background, BuzzFeed [5] reports. He has sold thousands of vials of execution drugs to corrections officials in the U.S. who are desperate to find drugs to carry out the death penalty, although an employee who works at the facility says the office is not being used to make drugs.

Perrigo plans to cut 800 jobs, or about 6 percent of its global workforce, and buy back $2 billion of shares to boost shareholder returns as it continues to fend off a hostile takeover bid from Mylan, Bloomberg News [6] writes.

India’s Department of Pharmaceuticals plans to issue a new voluntary Uniform Code of Pharmaceuticals Marketing Practices in a month, PharmaBiz [7] informs us.

An ImmunoGen gastric cancer drug being developed with Roche did not meet the main goal in a large study, according to Reuters [8].

More consumers are turning to the darknet for medicines, but drug makers argue that not only profits can be hurt, but also consumers, thanks to counterfeits, Bloomberg News [9] writes.

Only 5 million doses of the FluMist vaccine made by MedImmune, a unit of AstraZeneca, has been delivered so far this season, much less than the 15 million doses originally planned, The Washington Business Journal [10] writes.

AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly are deepening their collaboration in cancer immuno-therapy by testing new drug combinations for treating solid tumors, Reuters [11] tells us.

The FDA approved a Relypsa drug to treat potentially fatal levels of potassium in patients with chronic kidney disease or heart problems, Reuters [12] says.

FDA staffers raised questions about the safety of an AstraZeneca gout drug to be reviewed tomorrow, pointing to higher death rates, cardiovascular issues and kidney-related side effects, Reuters [13] writes.