Takeda maps out obesity strategy as it confronts blockbuster loss

Faced with the looming loss of patent protection on Actos, the world's top-selling diabetes drug, Japan's Takeda has mapped out a drug development strategy that relies heavily on a new generation of therapies for "lifestyle diseases." And with the ranks of the world's overweight adults projected to grow 75 percent in the next five years, Takeda's top planning honcho tells Bloomberg that he sees plenty of fresh opportunity for new and better therapies that deal with the health consequences of...

Takeda adds $1.5B for new drug buys

Japan's Takeda Pharmaceuticals says it will set aside more than $1.5 billion over the next three years to buy new products. That money will be in addition to the pharma company's regular budget for new drug acquisitions. Yomiuri first reported the news....

Affymax shares plunge on PhIII cardio issues for Hematide

Affymax says that a slate of four late-stage trials for its anemia drug Hematide demonstrated that the therapy is non-inferior to Amgen's Epogen and Aranesp, hitting its primary endpoints and putting it on a path to file for an FDA approval. But a stumble on cardio risks in a key sub-group of patients captured the unwelcome attention of analysts, with AFFY shares plunging 65 percent this morning. Altogether 2,609 patients were studied in the four late-stage studies in Europe and the U.S., with...

Takeda takes the axe to Chicago R&D complex

Bracing for a wave of new generic competition to its diabetes drug Actos, Takeda Pharmaceuticals is taking the axe to its big R&D operations in Chicago as part of a company-wide restructuring in the U.S. Takeda Global Research and Development Center in Lake Forest, which handles new drug development, is eliminating about 20 percent of its 840 staffers, according to ChicagoBreakingBusiness.com, which is managed by the Chicago Tribune. And altogether 28 percent of its 5,000 U.S. workers are...