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An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration voted against recommending an experimental diet drug known as lorcaserin be approved for marketing.
In a first of several votes to be taken this afternoon, only five members of the panel voted that the drug’s potential benefits to overweight Americans outweigh risks. Nine voted against the drug’s benefits-to-risks ratio. Get the full story »
In a rebuke of the safety of Abbott Laboratories diet drug Meridia, eight of 16 members of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel said this afternoon that the drug should be withdrawn from the U.S. market.
Meanwhile, six of the panelists said the drug should only be prescribed by “specially trained physicians” and include a strict FDA black box warning noting the new limits.
The other two panelists also said a new boxed warning should be added to alert consumers of increased risks of heart attacks and closer monitoring of patients by clinicians. Get the full story »
A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel will decide Wednesday whether the diet drug Meridia will remain on the market amid calls that it be removed. And on Thursday, another drug, known as lorcaserin, is up before an advisory committee where its developer will face questions from panelists and a possible recommendation for agency approval.
Eight Illinois companies were among the 100 companies nationwide deemed best by Working Mother magazine, whose 2010 list opens a window onto a widening array of corporate assistance programs.
Tuition assistance, a concierge service to help with errands, leadership training for women, assistance for employees with special-needs children, paid maternity and paternity leave, and extensive flexible work arrangements were among the benefits at the top 10 firms. Get the full story »
Almost a year after studies showed the diet pill Meridia increases heart attack and stroke risk, U.S. health regulators announced they will consider pulling the Abbott Laboratories’ drug off the market.
Meridia has been sold since 1997, but data released in November showed patients with heart disease taking the drug had a more than 11 percent risk of cardiovascular risks compared with 10 percent of those taking a placebo. European regulators pulled the product off the market in January.
Abbott Laboratories Wednesday said it closed the acquisition of Piramal Healthcare Ltd.’s generic drugs unit. In May, Abbott had agreed to buy Piramal’s healthcare solutions business for about $3.7 billion, Abbott Laboratories said in a statement.
Drug and medical device firm Abbott Laboratories says it has abandoned plans to sell its vaccines unit, less than three months after exploring sales talks with rival companies. Get the full story »
A trader watches the numbers in the S&P 500 pit at the CBOE on May 6 during the Dow's 1,000-point freefall. Stocks recovered, finishing down about 3 percent. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)
Regulators are scrutinizing what some in the stock market are calling “quote stuffing,” trading in which unusually large numbers of orders to buy or sell stocks are placed in a fraction of a second, only to be canceled almost immediately.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun looking into whether the practice is putting some investors at a disadvantage by distorting stock prices, according to people familiar with the matter. The SEC is looking at what role, if any, quote stuffing played in the May 6 “flash crash,” when the Dow Jones Industrial Average collapsed 700 points in minutes, the people say. Get the full story »
The prescription diet drug sibutramine, sold under the brand name Meridia, should be taken off the market because it raises the risk of heart attacks and strokes in some patients, the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine said Wednesday.
Those risks, published in January on a government clinical-trials Web site and now in full in the journal, outweigh the modest benefits of the medication, said Dr. Gregory Curfman, the journal’s executive editor and lead author of an editorial that accompanied the study.
The prescription diet drug sibutramine, sold under the brand name Meridia, should be taken off the market because it raises the risk of heart attacks and strokes in some patients, the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine said Wednesday.
Those risks, published in January on a government clinical-trials website and now in full in the journal, outweigh the modest benefits of the medication, said Dr. Gregory D. Curfman, the journal’s executive editor and lead author of an editorial that accompanied the study. Get the full story »
Abbott Laboratories said Wednesday the Food and Drug Administration cleared the company’s new hepatitis B test. The FDA approved the Abbott RealTime HBV test, which measures the amount of hepatitis B virus in a patient’s blood.
India’s market leader in medicines will soon be based near Lake Michigan.
Abbott Laboratories will hold the biggest share of India’s pharmaceuticals market, about 7 percent, when the company closes as early as next month on a $3.7 billion takeover of the drugs business of Piramal Healthcare Ltd. After committing more than $10 billion since February on such deals, Abbott Chief Executive Miles White said he has assembled a business in fast-growing countries that the company will count on for a big part of its growth. Get the full story »
Hospira CEO Chris Begley. (Hospira)
Hospira Inc. on Friday said Chief Executive Christopher Begley will retire after more than six years in the top job but remain active in the management and operation of the Lake Forest-based maker of generic drugs and hospital products.
Begley, 58, is the only CEO Hospira has had since it spun off from Abbott Laboratories in 2004 into its own publicly traded company. He will remain CEO until a successor is named and then take on the position of “executive chairman,” which Begley described in a conference call with analysts as a chairman who stays on as an employee “and plays a greater role in the company than a non-executive chair.” Get the full story »
Abbott Laboratories’ weight loss drug Meridia will be reviewed by an advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Sept. 15, the company said Friday. Get the full story »
Researchers have developed an implantable sensor that measures blood sugar continuously and transmits the information without wires — a milestone, they said, in diabetes treatment.
The device worked in one pig for more than a year and in another for nearly 10 months with no trouble, said a report in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Get the full story »
