LONDON (Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline has agreed to sell a clutch of North American non-prescription products for 426 million pounds to Prestige Brands Holdings, and remains in talks regarding the sale of similar European assets.

Britain’s biggest drugmaker said on Tuesday the sale of the over-the-counter (OTC) brands to Prestige would generate net cash proceeds of 242 million, which it will return to shareholders in 2012.

GSK first announced in February that it planned to sell non-core brands sold primarily in North America and Europe and representing about 10 percent of its consumer health portfolio, in order to focus on priority brands and emerging markets.

It had hoped to sell off the mix of painkillers and other products as a single block but markets have been difficult, due to broader financial uncertainties, prompting it to also look at piecemeal options in a long-running auction run by Goldman Sachs.

Analysts initially said all the OTC products together might raise between 1.5 billion and 2 billion pounds, or three to four times annual sales.

In the event the North American assets sold to Prestige fetched 3.2 times their 2010 sales of 134 million pounds — but it remains to be seen if the other brands, with combined sales of some 400 million pounds, will get a similar price.

In particular, there are doubts about the willingness of buyers to take on diet pill Alli, which is the biggest single brand in the mix. Alli was not included in the sale to Prestige.

LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) – Three of Europe’s biggest drugmakers — AstraZeneca (AZN.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Novartis (NOVN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Sanofi (SASY.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) — reported product setbacks on Tuesday, underlining the difficulties of developing new medicines to make up for those going off patent.

With the weakest pipeline of its European peers, AstraZeneca was hit hardest by a double blow to treatments for cancer and depression, which triggered $381.5 million in charges and will push 2011 profits to the lower end of its forecast range.

Novartis, meanwhile, faces plunging sales of blood pressure pill Rasilez after patients taking it actually did worse in a clinical trial, and Sanofi’s hopes of competing in the new market for oral multiple sclerosis (MS) drugs were dented by failure in a head-to-head study.

While AstraZeneca’s and Sanofi’s experimental medicines were known to be risky projects, the setback for Rasilez — an established treatment — caught analysts by surprise.

Kepler’s Martin Voegtli said the fact there were more adverse events when the Novartis drug was added to standard blood pressure pills was a “major setback” and was likely to lead to the drug being pulled from the market, wiping out an estimated $1.7 billion in peak annual sales.

Still, Swiss-based Novartis has other successful new medicines in its portfolio — including the first MS pill in Gilenya — and the stock slipped only 0.5 percent by 1000 GMT.

ASTRAZENECA VULNERABLE

LONDON, Dec 16 (Reuters) – European regulators have recommended approval of a targeted melanoma drug from Swiss group Roche Holding AG, opening the way to a new treatment option for patients with the deadliest form of skin cancer.

The green light for Zelboraf from the European Medicines Agency — which Roche said on Friday it expected to be formally endorsed by the European Commission in February — follows U.S. approval in August.

The new drug is given as a twice-daily pill and is designed to be used alongside a companion diagnostic test, also from Roche, that identifies which patients have a specific genetic mutation that means they will benefit from the treatment.

The London-based agency said the benefits of Zelboraf, particularly the improvements seen in terms of patients going longer before their disease progressed and overall survival, outweighed its potential risks.

Side effects from Zelboraf can include secondary growths, rash, slight hair loss, extreme photosensitivity and joint pain.

Zelboraf was developed in partnership with Daiichi Sankyo and became the second drug to be approved for melanoma in the United States this year, after Yervoy from Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Roche said in August that Zelboraf would cost just over $56,000 for a six-month course of treatment in the United States. It has yet to announce a price in Europe.

LONDON, Dec 16 (Reuters) – Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline are increasing sales of cut-price pneumonia vaccine to developing countries by more than 50 percent, marking the scale-up of an international programme to protect millions of children.

The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) is buying an additional 180 million doses of Pfizer’s pneumococcal vaccine Prevenar 13 and a similar quantity of GSK’s Synflorix at a deeply discounted price of $3.50 a shot.

The two companies said on Friday they would supply the extra vaccine through 2023, building on an original commitment last year to supply 300 million doses apiece.

The GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership set up in 2000 to speed the introduction of vaccines into the world’s poorest countries, hopes to avert up to 7 million deaths by 2030 by giving the vaccines to infants and young children.

Pneumococcal disease, which can cause pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis, kills more than half a million children every year, the vast majority of them in poorer countries.

GSK’s Synflorix protects against 10 strains of the streptococcus pneumoniae bacterium, while Pfizer’s Prevenar 13 shot protects against 13 strains.

In exchange for large orders, GAVI has negotiated a low price with the two drug companies, which get $7 per dose for the first 20 percent and $3.50 for the remainder of their orders under a so-called Advance Market Commitment (AMC) scheme.