Pfizer’s Top Executive To Hand Over Reins To Company’s Current COO At End Of Year

The Associated Press: Drugmaker Pfizer's CEO Read To Be Replaced By COO Bourla
The biggest U.S.-based drugmaker will change leaders in January when Pfizer Chief Operating Officer Albert Bourla replaces CEO Ian Read, who has led the company for nearly eight years. Pfizer Inc. said Monday that Read will become executive chairman of Pfizer's board of directors. The move comes after Pfizer's board in March gave Read an $8 million bonus contingent on boosting Pfizer's stock price and staying on for up to a year. (Johnson and Murphy, 10/1)

Reuters: Pfizer To Replace Longtime CEO Read With Veteran Bourla
Under Read, a Scot who joined the company in 1978, Pfizer has weathered patent expirations of several blockbusters, including cholesterol drug Lipitor, through dealmaking, expansion in emerging markets and cost cuts. Pfizer won 30 approvals from the U.S. health regulator during his tenure. Read, however, failed to pull off two mega deals - acquisition of British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc in 2014 and Botox maker Allergan Plc in 2016 - that would have helped lower its corporate taxes. (Mathias and Banerjee, 10/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Pfizer CEO Read To Step Aside At Year’s End
Mr. Bourla will confront one more big U.S. patent loss, on the pain drug Lyrica at the end of this year. Lyrica generated $3.5 billion in U.S. sales last year. Pfizer executives say the company is well positioned to increase revenue if its pipeline of new drugs and vaccines realize their promise. Pfizer says it has 15 products in the late stages of development, each of which could achieve a billion dollars in sales or more. (Rockoff, 10/1)

Stat: AmerisourceBergen Pays $625 Million To Settle Charges
AmerisourceBergen (ABC), one of the largest U.S. prescription drug wholesalers, agreed to pay $625 million to the federal and state governments to resolve allegations that the company illegally distributed adulterated and misbranded drugs, including syringes for cancer patients. The settlement resolves civil claims that Medical Initiatives, a purported pharmacy that AmerisourceBergen opened in Alabama, caused numerous false claims to be submitted to Medicaid for unapproved new drugs or defective and contaminated medicines, and double billed for the same drug vials, according to a statement by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, who disclosed the agreement. (Silverman, 10/1)

Modern Healthcare: AmerisourceBergen To Pay $625M In Drug Distribution Settlement 
The civil settlement falls in line with the company's September 2017 guilty plea for distributing the drugs. AmerisourceBergen's now-defunct subsidiary Medical Initiatives shipped plastic syringes filled with cancer drugs to providers in all 50 states, having removed the drugs from their original glass vials. That allowed the company to sell excess product from the original vials, known as "overfill." But the repackaging took place in an unsterile environment, and combined the contents of multiple vials in a process known as "pooling," despite many of the vials carrying a "single-use" designation. (10/1)

And in other pharmaceutical news —

Stat: 'Nurse Educators' Paid By Drug Companies Facing Scrutiny As Lawsuits Mount 
The lawsuits contend the companies hired third-party contractors to deploy nurses — sometimes by phone, sometimes in patient’s homes — to ensure that prescriptions were refilled. The drug makers also allegedly provided kickbacks to physicians in the form of free insurance processing assistance, medical practice management software, and marketing assistance to persuade them to prescribe their drugs. ... On one hand, the nurses teach patients how to use complicated medications, work to resolve drug-related problems, and help with insurance paperwork — all of which [Carson Domey and other Humira patients may appreciate. But they also keep patients taking the world’s best-selling medication, even if another drug would work just as well, [professor Adriane] Fugh-Berman said. (Silverman and Weintraub, 10/2)

Bloomberg: Pfizer Veteran Bourla To Take Over CEO Role From Ian Read
Pfizer Inc. Chief Executive Officer Ian Read plans to step aside after eight years at the helm of the U.S.’s biggest drugmaker, handing the role to a company veteran in a widely expected transition. Albert Bourla, 56, who was appointed chief operating officer at the start of the year, will take over as CEO in January. Read, 65, will remain executive chairman, giving the longtime Pfizer head continuing oversight of the pharmaceutical giant. (Koons and Hopkins, 10/1)