For the Medicines Company, a respite from a multi-billion Dollar blunder proved to be very short-lived.

On Friday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office once again ended up denying the firm's request to extend the life of the patent it currently holds, that protects its foremost medicine, the blood thinner Angiomax.

A. P. Pharma Inc. uncovered that U. S. health regulators disapproved its experimental drug designed to treat nausea and vomiting induced by chemotherapy, revealing concerns related to the drug's administration system.

Teva Pharmaceuticals, already the world's biggest maker of generic drugs, has outshined U. S. drugs powerhouse Pfizer and Iceland's Actavis in the race for Ratiopharm. The agreement between the two companies is expected to take place soon, after a nine-month battle for about 3.5 billion Euros ($4.78 billion).

On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration warned Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd. for selling nitroglycerin tablets without approval.

FDA said, "Based upon our information, there are no FDA-approved applications on file for nitroglycerin tablets in doses of 0.3 milligrams, 0.4 milligrams and 0.6 milligrams”.

On Monday, U. S. shares were slow in trading. While Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 40 points to 10584, the Standard & Poor's 500 slid 8 points to 1142 and the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 30 points to 2347.

Shares of Boston Scientific Corp., Chordiant Software Inc. and Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc. are actively trading.

The new anti-clotting drug produced by Merck & Co. and Portola Pharmaceuticals Inc., called betrixaban, has shown greater effectiveness than warfarin. A recent study has observed that the patients of atrial fibrillations suffered lesser bleeding when given a light dose of betrixaban than those who were given warfarin. Warfarin is essentially a 50 year old blood thinner.

The researchers on Sunday revealed that a new heart clip from Abbott which is an experimental, minimally invasive method to repair leaky heart valves proved to be highly safe and nearly as effective as open heart surgery, fulfilling the primary goals of a pivotal study.

The little clip is reported to be threaded via an artery into the heart, opposed to open heart surgery.

Novartis AG’s blood-pressure drug Diovan has been found to slightly lower the incidence of diabetes in certain high-risk patients, while its other drug has not proved successful in doing so.  However, neither of these drugs helped reduce the risk of heart attacks and related disease in these patients.
 

A Canadian law firm has filled its array of class-action lawsuits against the maker of Bayer's popularly prescribed oral contraceptives Yaz and Yasmin, alleging that the drug resulted in serious health complications for some of the women who took it, without any adequate warnings.

Pfizer, the world's largest research-based pharmaceutical company, has withdrawn the on - going research pioneered by it to curb lung cancer by the utilizing the properties of the drug named figitumamab. The step has been taken after confirmation was made about the probable ineffectiveness of the drug in treating the disorder.