Teva Archives - Medical Design Sourcing

Teva and Allergan reportedly agree to pay $5B billion to settle opioid allegations

[Prescription pill bottle image courtesy of Pexels]

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE:TEVA) and AbbVie unit Allergan Plc (NYSE:ABBV) could pay more than $5 billion in total to settle some 3,500 opioid lawsuits, according to Bloomberg. While the two companies are willing to settle the suits in the consolidated case, the deal has not been finalized.

The consolidated case is titled In Re National Prescription Opioid Litigation, 17-MD-2804, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio (Cleveland).

Teva and Allergan have reportedly been in mediation for more than a year.

In 2016, Teva completed a $40.5 billion acquisition of Allergan’s generic business, including generic opioids.

In 2020, AbbVie acquired Allergan.

Earlier this year, Teva Pharmaceuticals and AbbVie reached a deal with Rhode Island for a total of $28.5 million to settle opioid-related claims.

Teva entered…

OrbiMed taps former Moderna CMO and Gossamer Bio co-founder

The healthcare investment firm OrbiMed (New York City) has added two members to its team, including Dr. Tal Zaks, the former chief medical officer (CMO) at Moderna. Zaks will be a venture partner at Orbimed. Also joining the firm is Dr. Sheila Gujrathi, who was formerly the CEO of Gossamer Bio, who will be a venture advisor at OrbiMed.

Dr. Tal Zaks

Zaks spent six years at Moderna, where he was involved in the company’s metamorphosis from private biotech to COVID-19 vaccine pioneer with a sizable research pipeline in multiple therapeutic areas.

As for Gujrathi, she has experience in various companies, including Receptos, which Celgene acquired in 2015. She has also worked as a physician and management consultant at McKinsey and held several other leadership positions. Gujrathi also serves as the director of the board at Janux Therapeutics, chair of the board of directors at ADARx Pharmaceutics an…

AWS and pharma heavyweights join forces on AI-based drug discovery lab

The goal of using AI to transform drug discovery and development may not be novel. But a recent alliance is unique in both the stature of companies belonging to it and its choice of an innovation model.

Big Pharma firms AstraZeneca (LON:AZN), Merck KGaA (ETR: MRK), Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and Teva (NYSE:TEVA) will partner with Amazon Web Services Inc. (NSDQ:AMZN) and the Israel Biotech Fund (IBF) on what they term a “first-of-its-kind innovation lab” known as AION Labs.

“The launch of AION Labs will provide an opportunity for the healthcare and life sciences industry to uncover new ways to reduce the time and cost for discovery, facilitate open collaboration and interoperability, and ultimately improve patients’ health outcomes,” said Dan Sheeran, director of healthcare and life sciences at Amazon Web Services, in a statement.

AION Labs has also formed a strategic partnership with the biomedical research institute BioMed X (Heidelberg, Germany).

The lab…