ZURICH/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG (ROG.VX: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Tuesday it was overhauling its research operations by closing the 80-year-old New Jersey facility where Valium was discovered, cutting 1,000 jobs and replacing its drug research chief.

Jean-Jacques Garaud, head of pharmaceutical research, will leave the company at the end of this week, Roche said. He will be replaced by Mike Burgess, head of cancer drugs.

ZURICH/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG (ROG.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Tuesday it was overhauling its research operations by closing the 80-year-old New Jersey facility where Valium was discovered, cutting 1,000 jobs and replacing its drug research chief.

Jean-Jacques Garaud, head of pharmaceutical research, will leave the company at the end of this week, Roche said. He will be replaced by Mike Burgess, head of cancer drugs.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Michael Tardugno, chief executive of tiny Celsion Corp, is convinced he has a $1 billion cancer therapy on his hands with its ThermoDox treatment for liver cancer.

The company, with a market valuation of only about $70 million and all of 16 employees, is not trying to reinvent the wheel. But by placing a very old cancer drug – the chemotherapy doxorubicin – into a new delivery method and adding heat, Celsion believes it has a recipe for success that can address a large need in cancer.

June 11 (Reuters) – An experimental long-acting insulin
being developed by Eli Lilly and Co demonstrated greater
blood sugar control than Sanofi SA’s top selling
Lantus in type 1 diabetes and was comparable in type 2 diabetes,
with the added advantage of weight loss, according to data from
midstage studies.

Lilly, which is developing the long-acting, or basal,
insulin and other diabetes medicines with Boehringer Ingelheim,
is hoping to make inroads into Sanofi’s domination with the new
drug currently known as LY2605541. Lantus, known chemically as
insulin glargine, owns about 80 percent of the basal insulin
market and had sales of about $5 billion last year.

By Bill Berkrot

(Reuters) – An experimental treatment for type 2 diabetes developed by Johnson & Johnson demonstrated greater reduction in blood sugar than Merck & Co’s Januvia and an older common treatment, glimepiride, according to data from a pair of late stage clinical trials.

The J&J drug, canagliflozin, also led to significantly greater weight loss than both of the other drugs and far fewer incidents of hypoglycemia, or potentially dangerous drops in blood sugar levels, than glimepiride, a member of the sulfonylurea class of medicines.

June 9 (Reuters) – An experimental treatment for type 2
diabetes developed by Johnson & Johnson demonstrated
greater reduction in blood sugar than Merck & Co’s
Januvia and an older common treatment, glimepiride, according to
data from a pair of late stage clinical trials.

The J&J drug, canagliflozin, also led to significantly
greater weight loss than both of the other drugs and far fewer
incidents of hypoglycemia, or potentially dangerous drops in
blood sugar levels, than glimepiride, a member of the
sulfonylurea class of medicines.

June 8 (Reuters) – Novo Nordisk’s experimental
long-acting insulin degludec was as effective in lowering blood
sugar as Sanofi’s top-selling Lantus and led to far
fewer incidents of potentially dangerous overnight hypoglycemia,
according to results from a late-stage study.

Degludec met the primary goal of the study in patients with
type 2 diabetes by lowering blood sugar as well as Lantus, based
on a measure of control over time called A1C.

By Bill Berkrot

(Reuters) – Patients taking Johnson & Johnson’s Stelara experienced significant relief from the painful symptoms of active psoriatic arthritis, according to results of a late-stage study.

The drug met the main goal of the 615-patient Phase III clinical trial — at least a 20 percent improvement in signs and symptoms of the disease after 24 weeks — at both tested doses compared with a placebo, the data showed.

By Bill Berkrot

(Reuters) – A pair of newer drugs proved no better, and by some measures inferior, to the older and cheaper chemotherapy agent paclitaxel in patients with locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer, according to results of a late stage study.

Weekly dosing of paclitaxel appeared to result in significantly longer progression-free survival, or how long it takes for the disease to worsen, than Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Ixempra, researchers found. Paclitaxel therapy also led to fewer toxic side effects than Celgene Corp’s Abraxane, the 799-patient study found.

May 30 (Reuters) – Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who last
year failed to get his nominees elected to the board of Forest
Laboratories Inc, plans to back another slate of
directors at the drugmaker’s next shareholder meeting, according
to a regulatory filing on Wednesday.

Icahn holds 9.92 percent of Forest shares — up from 9.2
percent last August — making him the company’s second-largest
shareholder behind Wellington Management’s 12.8 percent stake,
according to Thomson Reuters data.