Orshe

Bad news on the Alzheimer’s drug development front: Pfizer and Medivation announced negative results from a large late-stage trial of Dimebon, thought to be a promising treatment more potent than those currently on the market.

Dimebon, you may remember, got its start a quarter-century ago as a Russian cold medicine that Pfizer plunked down $225 million for licensing rights in 2008. The deal also included potential milestone payments of as much as $500 million.

Pfizer has won FDA approval of a product developed by Wyeth, which Pfizer bought last year for $68 billion. And it’s a biggie — a updated version of the world’s best-selling vaccine Prevnar. See the Pfizer announcement.

With an apparent eye on Pfizer’s experience early this month, Merck officials made one thing abundantly clear during the morning’s earnings report: “Nothing in our guidance has changed,” CFO Peter Kellogg said on a conference call with analysts.

Generic maker Teva Pharmaceutical posted higher quarterly results that included stronger sales of its branded multiple sclerosis treatment Copaxone.

A bunch of the blockbuster drugs that carried the drug industry for the past decade are about to go off patent. As we’ve noted along with everybody else, that’s going to be tough for pharma companies.

(See, for example, the news this week from Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which over the next two years will face generic competition on the two biggest drugs in the world, Lipitor and Plavix.)

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided last year to allow nurse anesthetists in California to work without a supervising physician. Now two doctors’ groups are challenging the move in court, according to HealthLeaders Media.

The fight centers over 2001 Medicare rules that usually require a doctor to supervise when nurses administer anesthesia, but allow states to op out of the requirement if a governor sends a letter to the feds. California did that in June.

Pfizer spent $2.8 billion on R&D in the fourth quarter of last year, according to today’s earnings announcement from the company. But R&D spending is about to fall pretty sharply, according to estimates from the company.

This is no surprise — the big spending in the fourth quarter was largely the result of the company’s acquisition of Wyeth, which closed on Oct. 15, and Pfizer has said cuts are on the way.

A post today over at Pharmalot drew our attention to notices of job cuts that Merck and Pfizer had announced on a New Jersey government Web site.

The latest peace pact in the generics wars has been signed by AstraZeneca and Teva, shielding AstraZeneca’s mega-selling heartburn drug Nexium from Teva competition until 2014. Now the question is whether a similar deal with another generic maker — Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories — is far behind.

Lots of big drug makers have been pushing into China lately. Eli Lilly’s adding jobs there even as it makes cuts in the U.S.; Novartis is spending $1 billion to expand an R&D facility in Shanghai; and Pfizer has made a couple deals to study and sell drugs in China.