Pfizer

Donald Russell LaTona, a retired district manager for Pfizer Inc. and former Ellicott City resident who played one season in the National Football League, died of cancer Monday at his winter home in Hudson, Fla. He was 64. Mr. LaTona was born and raised in Newton, Mass., and played center and middle linebacker on his high school football team. He played football while earning a bachelor's degree in physical education at Boston University, graduating in 1963. He played one season at center for the Minnesota Vikings before taking a position in 1964 as a pharmaceutical salesman for Parke-Davis Co. The company was later acquired by Warner-Lambert and finally Pfizer.

If you seek more evidence for the decline and fall of the U.S. economy, Pfizer Inc. is furnishing it. The huge pharmaceutical company has been slashing its research and development spending and eliminating thousands of jobs. Last week John Mattina, Pfizer's former R&D chief, questioned the strategy, telling Reuters: "If you don't have new products, you don't have a business anymore. " That might be the grim diagnosis not just for Pfizer but for America Inc. The federal government, under pressure to balance the budget, has been cutting research spending for decades.

Biospherics Inc. of Beltsville said yesterday that it would proceed without Pfizer Inc. to begin testing its low-calorie sweetener, D-tagatose, and that it hoped to market the product overseas within a couple years.After eight months evaluating the Biospherics product, Pfizer said the test results were encouraging, but that it would not go ahead developing the product as quickly as Biospherics wanted, said Gilbert V. Levin, president of the company.Biospherics said it had already made enough of the sweetener to begin tests in an industrial toxicology laboratory.

Container cargo at the port of Baltimore's public terminals in August was its second-highest amount ever for a single month, continuing a strong rebound, port officials said Tuesday. In August, 57,510 TEUs, or 20-foot equivalent units, came across the city's docks. In July, container traffic had set a record with 63,740 TEUs. Container cargo was strong in June as well, with 57,277 TEUs. Before that, the record was 56,454 TEUs, set in July 2005 — before the economic downturn.

Drug giant Pfizer Inc. said yesterday that it would lay off 10,000 workers and close several manufacturing and research sites in an effort to bolster earnings hurt by the loss of patent protection on certain drugs and setbacks in developing new products. The company said the employee reductions were equivalent to about 10 percent of its worldwide work force and would take place by the end of next year. Among the cuts would be a 20 percent reduction in its European sales force. That move would follow a similar reduction announced two months ago in the company's American sales force and is included in the 10,000 figure.

WASHINGTON -- A senior scientist at the National Institutes of Health exercised his right against self-incrimination yesterday, refusing to answer questions from a congressional subcommittee probing conflicts of interest at the agency. Dr. P. Trey Sunderland III, who remains chief of the geriatric psychology branch at the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health, had accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees from Pfizer Inc. while collaborating with the company in his official role.

NEW YORK -- Pfizer Inc. will slash 2,200 U.S. sales jobs as the world's largest drugmaker reduces expenses to compensate for revenue lost to cheaper generic pharmaceuticals. The 20 percent cut in Pfizer's sales staff of 11,000 is an "initial step" growing out of a companywide review of operations announced in October, Pfizer said in a statement yesterday. Pfizer said it would outline additional steps in January. Members of the U.S. sales staff will be notified next month whether they are among those being fired, said Paul Fitzhenry, a Pfizer spokesman.

BEAUMONT, Texas - Pfizer Inc., the world's No. 1 drug maker, agreed to pay $49 million to settle a suit alleging that a company it acquired two years ago overcharged the federal and state governments for Lipitor, a cholesterol-lowering drug. The settlement was more than double the $21 million the Medicaid program overpaid for the drug in 1999, according to lawyers for plaintiff John David Foster, a former account manager for Pfizer's Parke-Davis unit. Foster raised questions about the charges for Lipitor that led to the whistle-blower suit in 2000.

NEW YORK -- Pfizer Inc. urged shareholders of Warner-Lambert Co. yesterday to remove the company's directors as it stepped up pressure on the rival drug maker to accept a hostile takeover bid of $73 billion.Pfizer said it will begin soliciting shareholder votes as it tries to block a $70 billion friendly merger between Warner-Lambert and American Home Products Corp. Either transaction would create the world's largest drug maker.Warner-Lambert rejected Pfizer's bid and threatened to cancel the companies' partnership to market the cholesterol drug Lipitor, Warner-Lambert's best seller.

NEW YORK -Pfizer Inc., the world's biggest drug maker, said yesterday that it expects to complete its $53 billion purchase of Pharmacia Corp. next month after agreeing with U.S. antitrust regulators to sell some products. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission staff will forward the proposal to the full commission for approval, Pfizer said. Pfizer spokesman Andy McCormick declined to identify the products to be sold, though the company said the divestments won't have a material effect on its business.

WASHINGTON - -A landmark $2.3 billion health care fraud settlement announced Wednesday involving Pfizer Inc. has put the pharmaceutical industry on notice that its widespread and potentially criminal behavior in promoting drugs for unauthorized uses won't be tolerated by the Obama administration, government officials and legal experts said. But, they added, some companies will continue to risk prosecution for such questionable practices because the fines and penalties pale in comparison to the extraordinary profits that are being made on the widespread practice of marketing drugs for "off-label" uses that have not been approved by the federal government.

Towson U. gets U.S. development grant Towson University said yesterday that it has won $300,000 in federal grants to be used on economic development services in Baltimore and Western Maryland in the next three years. The Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration awarded the grants. Towson University, which plans to work with Frostburg State University on the Western Maryland services, said it used a 2005 grant from the federal agency to help Baltimore officials put together an economic development strategy and also to track worker skills and commuting patterns in Western Maryland.

For people with high cholesterol, the wait for a cheaper version of Lipitor has gotten longer. Pfizer Inc. announced an agreement yesterday to head off generic competition for its flagship drug until November 2011. The drugmaker said it settled patent litigation with Ranbaxy Laboratories, an Indian generic drugmaker that had threatened to market its own version of Lipitor, the world's best-selling medicine. The agreement delays Ranbaxy's generic version of Lipitor and is estimated to be worth billions of dollars in additional sales for Pfizer, which could have faced generic competition from Ranbaxy as early as March 2010.

Pfizer Inc. Shares fell 19 cents to $22.05. To prepare for competition from generic versions of its cholesterol medicine Lipitor, the world's largest drug maker will outsource more manufacturing and expand in China.

WASHINGTON -- Pfizer Inc. fought off a U.S. Supreme Court appeal that aimed to open the company's Lipitor cholesterol pill, the most widely prescribed drug in the world, to generic competition. The high court, without comment, turned away yesterday arguments from Indian drugmaker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd., which sought to block a patent extension that protects Lipitor in the United States through March 2010. A federal appeals court upheld the extension in August. Lipitor had sales of $12.9 billion last year and accounts for as much as 40 percent of Pfizer's profit.

Drug giant Pfizer Inc. said yesterday that it would lay off 10,000 workers and close several manufacturing and research sites in an effort to bolster earnings hurt by the loss of patent protection on certain drugs and setbacks in developing new products. The company said the employee reductions were equivalent to about 10 percent of its worldwide work force and would take place by the end of next year. Among the cuts would be a 20 percent reduction in its European sales force. That move would follow a similar reduction announced two months ago in the company's American sales force and is included in the 10,000 figure.

WASHINGTON - Pfizer Inc., the world's largest drug company, is investigating the activities of Dr. Peter Rost, a company executive who supports the idea of importing cheaper prescription drugs from foreign countries. Pfizer spokesman Jack Cox wouldn't discuss the nature of Rost's daylong interview Wednesday by a company-retained attorney, but said, "The meeting was professional and entirely consistent with Pfizer's policies regarding respect for employees." Rost, a vice president of marketing at Pfizer, is the first drug-industry executive to dispute publicly the industry and federal government position that importing prescription drugs isn't safe.

NEW YORK -Pfizer Inc., the world's largest drug maker, won Federal Trade Commission approval yesterday for its $57 billion purchase of Pharmacia Corp., clearing the final regulatory obstacle to completing the takeover this week. Last month, both companies agreed to sell some products to win U.S. antitrust approval, and in February reached a similar accord to obtain European Commission clearance. The acquisition will give Pfizer all of the revenue for Celebrex and Bextra, top-selling painkillers that are jointly marketed by the two companies.

It is more blessed to give than to receive - which even goes for giant corporations and their executives. Unfortunately, not all embrace that message. Drugmaker Pfizer Inc. adhered to the basic philosophy by recently raising its dividend to shareholders after its stock dropped when it curtailed development of a potentially blockbuster drug. On the other hand, former executives of government-sponsored mortgage company Fannie Mae are refusing to give back bonus money they received as a result of improper accounting.

A leading government Alzheimer's researcher told a federal judge in Baltimore yesterday that he had no good explanation for why he improperly accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in undisclosed fees from a drug manufacturer while helping to control government-sponsored research with the same company. Before the judge imposed the agreed-upon sentence of two years of probation, 400 hours of community service and a restitution payment of $300,000, Pearson "Trey" Sunderland III, chief of the geriatric psychiatry branch of the National Institute of Mental Health, said the conviction "humbled me in a way I've never experienced before."