Pfizer has announced plans to reorganize the company into three businesses: an Innovative Medicines business, an Established Medicines business, and a Consumer Healthcare business. The changes will be effective at the beginning of the company’s 2019 fiscal year. Read More

Takeda Pharmaceutical has received unconditional clearance from the US Federal Trade Commission for the company’s proposed $62-billion acquisition of Shire that was announced on May 8. The deal is expected to close in the first half of calendar year 2019. Read More

Novartis has announced plans to spin off Alcon, its eye-care division, into a stand-alone company. The company is also planning a share buyback of up to $5 billion by the end of 2019. Read More

Biogen has exercised its option to purchase additional shares of Samsung Bioepis, its biosimilars joint venture with Samsung BioLogics, a South Korea-based contract biologics manufacturer, in a deal worth approximately $700 million. The move will increase Biogen’s stake from 5.4% to 49.9%. Read More

US Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Tina Smith (D-MN) have sent a letter calling on Emma Walmsley, CEO, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), to take action to alleviate a shortage of the company’s shingles vaccine, Shingrix (recombinant zoster vaccine), and to develop a plan for maintaining adequate production and distribution of the vaccine.  Read More

Deborah Dunsire, MD, has been named as the new President and CEO of H. Lundbeck A/S, effective September 1. She will succeed Anders Götzsche, Lundbeck’s CFO, who has served as interim CEO since Kåre Schultz, former President and CEO, left the company in September 2017 to become President and CEO of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries in November 2017. Read More

Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, the North American arm of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, is planning to relocate its US headquarters from North Wales, Pennsylvania to Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey. Teva plans to expand its Parsippany-Troy Hills location to nearly 350,000 square feet, transfer and create 843 jobs, and retain 232 existing positions. Read More

Boehringer Ingelheim has completed a new filling line at its commercial manufacturing facility in Shanghai, China for its contract manufacturing business, BioXcellence. The new isolator-based fill/finish line is for GMP operations for aseptic filling of liquids in vials. Read More

Rubius Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company developing cellular therapies, is investing up to $155 million to establish a manufacturing facility in Rhode Island. Rubius has developed a manufacturing platform to produce allogeneic, ready-to use product candidates from red blood cells. Read More

Otsuka Pharmaceutical has agreed to acquire Visterra, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on antibody development, for approximately $430 million. Visterra’s platform enables the design of precision antibody-based therapies that the company says specifically modulate disease targets that are not adequately addressed by current technologies in antibody therapeutics. Read More