Supreme Court to weigh drug confidentiality laws

The New York Times: A Fight Over How Drugs Are Pitched
Marketing to doctors using prescription records bearing their names is an increasingly contentious practice, with three states, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, in the vanguard of enacting laws to limit the uses of a doctor's prescription records for marketing. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case, Sorrell v. IMS Health, that tests whether Vermont's prescription confidentiality law violates the free speech protections of the First Amendment (Singer, 4/24).

The Boston Globe: On the Long, Hard Road To A Breakthrough
After more than two decades in existence and $4 billion spent on research and development — including work on other experimental therapies and disease treatments — Vertex is finally on the verge of producing its first major drug. On Thursday, a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee is scheduled to consider whether the company's hepatitis C pill, telaprevir, is ready for doctors to prescribe to patients. If the recommendation is favorable — as expected — and FDA officials approve the drug next month, telaprevir could become a blockbuster treatment, by some estimates quickly reaching annual sales of more than $2 billion a year (Johnson, 4/24).

Reuters: Pfizer Deal Allows Dr. Reddy's To Sell Depression Pill In U.S. From June 1
Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd., India's second-largest drugmaker, will be allowed to sell a generic version of Wyeth's antidepressant drug starting June 1 following an agreement with the unit of Pfizer Inc (Agrawal, 4/24).