Monday, April 23, 2007

Novartis - if you want a job doing right, do it yourself?

The Independent on Sunday has a good story.

NeuTec Pharma, the UK biotech company acquired nine months ago by Swiss giant Novartis for £305m, has seen its main drug rejected by European regulators.

The failure of the treatment will raise fears that a new $890m (£445m) licensing deal agreed last week by the Swiss pharmaceuticals giant for a risky cancer drug could meet the same fate.

"Hopefully, their due diligence will be better than it was last time around," said an analyst.

Ouch!

But wait. Novartis have a "reason" for the failure.

A Novartis spokesman said the application for European approval was filed originally by NeuTec, not Novartis, and said that the biotech group's limited resources were to blame.

"When we bought NeuTec, we saw the typical shortcuts that are taken by biotech companies. We knew that the chance for approval was below 50 per cent," he said. "We factored this in.

"The rejection was due primarily to manufacturing issues. We will go back and do more clinical trials, but do them in a way that major pharma can do it rather than a 20-person company."

Oh, I get it. No one but a Big Pharma can get it right.

Right?

Er, could they be wrong?

Very wrong.

One of the "dirty dozen" falls.

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