Novartis

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on Wednesday said it is taking local units of GlaxoSmithKline and Swiss healthcare company Novartis to court over false or misleading representations in the marketing of pain relief products.

It claims they represented Osteo Gel on its packaging and online as specifically formulated for treating osteoarthritis and was more effective than Emulgel, when they had identical formulas.

Novartis’s third-quarter core net income rose 4 percent at constant currencies, beating analyst expectations, as the Swiss drugmaker said it made “significant progress” in preparing its Alcon eyecare unit for a possible spinoff by the first half of 2019.

For fiscal 2017, the company continues to expects net sales to be broadly in line with prior year and core operating income to be broadly in line or decline low single digit, both at constant currency rates.

Novartis announced that its Chief Executive Officer Joseph Jimenez has informed the board of directors of his desire to step down in 2018. The company’s board has appointed Vasant Narasimhan, its Global Head of Drug Development and Chief Medical Officer, to the position of CEO, effective February 1, 2018. Narasimhan is a member of the Executive Committee.

Novartis and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) have launched a patient trial for KAF156, a next-generation antimalarial compound with the potential to treat drug-resistant strains of the malaria parasite. The trial will test the efficacy of KAF156 in combination with a new, improved formulation of the existing antimalarial lumefantrine. The first trial center is operational in Mali and will be followed by sixteen additional centers across a total of nine countries in Africa and Asia over the next few months.

Swiss pharmaceuticals group Novartis says net income fell 15 percent in the first quarter, as it continued to adjust to generic competition for its Gleevec leukemia drug and stopped work on a hoped-for treatment for heart failure.

The Basel-based company said net income dropped to $1.7 billion in the quarter, compared to $2.01 in the year-earlier period. It cited a $200 million charge to discontinue RLX030, which failed to pass tests in trials as a treatment for acute heart failure.

Novartis expects growth in China’s pharmaceuticals market to accelerate as the nation’s health authorities expedite approvals for new medicines and increase reimbursement. The Chinese pharmaceutical market may exceed $300 billion in sales by 2020, Chief Executive Officer Joe Jimenez said in an interview in Geneva on Tuesday. That will happen as regulators in the country push to offer new drugs to sick patients who’ve traditionally not had access to the world’s groundbreaking meds. The country is now the world’s second-biggest pharmaceutical market, behind the U.S.

Greece’s parliament on Wednesday voted to open an investigation into alleged health scandals going back two decades, involving bribes and inflated prices for medical equipment and medicine. A broad majority of 187 lawmakers in the 300-seat parliament approved a government proposal to look into suspected mismanagement between 1997 and 2014.

"Everything must be investigated… to clear up whether the public interest was upheld," Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told the chamber. For years, public (funds) were pillaged, hurting social security funds and benefiting powerful interests," the PM said.

Pharma industry leaders, including Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez and Merck & Co. chief Kenneth Frazier, got their marching orders from President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning. Lower your prices, deliver "better" innovation and "move your companies back" to the U.S.

In a "pharma" meeting in the Oval Office, the President told executives from companies that they have done a "terrific job over the years" but that prices for drugs must come down.

"Our trade policy will prioritize that foreign countries pay their fair share for U.S.-manufactured drugs, so our drug companies have greater financial resources to accelerate development of new cures, and I think that’s so important," Trump said.