(AOF) – Pharmaceutical company Biogen has agreed to pay $900 million to end allegations that it bribed doctors to get them to prescribe its multiple sclerosis drugs, AOF said. said the US Department of Justice. The whistleblower will receive 29.6% of the funds received by the State.
According to the plaintiff’s complaint, from January 1, 2009 to March 18, 2014, Biogen offered and paid compensation, including speaker fees, consultation fees and meals, to healthcare professionals who spoke or attended Biogen’s conference programs, in order to induce them to prescribe the drugs Avonex, Tysabri and Tecfidera, in violation of anti-corruption law.
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An inevitable race for new blockbusters
The patent for Merck’s star product, the cancer drug Keytruda, which accounts for more than 35% of its sales, expires in 2028. Despite the loss, since 2019, of the patents for its three star products (Avastin, Herceptine, Rituxan) Roche was able to renew its portfolio by bringing new molecules to market. However, the discovery and launch of new drugs are increasingly expensive. AstraZeneca spends regarding $6 billion a year on R&D in a pharmaceutical industry where the life of a patent only lasts ten to fifteen years. This leads laboratories to withdraw from certain activities. Thus J&J, Pfizer, GSK and, no doubt, Novartis soon prefer to refocus on specialty drugs and abandon any ancillary activity.