30 June Merck & Co and Schering-Plough have decided to withdraw a New Drug Application for a combination tablet of the firms’ big-selling Claritin and Singulair, and are terminating their eight-year respiratory joint venture.
It is not an overly-surprising decision, coming as it does a couple of months after the two companies received a not-approvable letter from the FDA for a proposed fixed combination of SGP’s Claritin (loratadine) and Merck’s Singulair (montelukast) for the treatment of allergic rhinitis symptoms. The respiratory deal was set up in 2000 specifically to develop and sell the combination pill.
As a result SGP expects to receive $105 million from Merck, to be recognised over the remaining three quarters of 2008. The companies also noted that the actions had no impact on their cholesterol joint venture, through which they market the controversial drug Vytorin, a combination of Zetia (ezetimibe) and Zocor.
And in other news that seems good that Merck announced the results of its new study in which its investigational candidate, odanacatib, reduced measures of bone turnover in women with breast cancer that has spread to the bones which were presented at the International Meeting on Cancer Induced Bone Disease.
Analyst Shah downgraded the stock and made his target price $ 34. He suggest the investor to go SHORT from around $ 38.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment