Biotech SF: Actavis

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Transcept CEO Glenn Oclassen.

Four months after launching a middle-of-the-night sleep drug, Transcept Pharmaceuticals Inc. and partner Purdue Pharma are facing down generic competitors. Units of Actavis Group and Watson Laboratories filed abbreviated new drug applications with the Food and Drug Administration in July to sell generic versions of Intermezzo tablets, Richmond-based Transcept (NASDAQ: TSPT) said in a Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Transcept and Purdue, which sells Intermezzo, on Aug. 23 filed a patent infringement suit against Actavis in U.S. District Court in New Jersey. They filed another suit Monday against Parsippany, N.J.-based Watson.

Some of my favorite stories.

• "The fight of his life" (2007)

Last year Mike Homer helped raise the money for 2,000 medical research computers. Now researchers are using that equipment in an attempt to save his life.

• "For reporter, CJD is more than a story" (2007)

Seven years ago -- nearly to the day -- my mother died of Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease.

• "A son's YouTube plea for Avastin" (2010)

Josh Turnage is your typical teenager, trying to discover what he wants to do in college and with his life. But a 7-minute, 41-second YouTube video he produced about his mother's fight with breast cancer may thrust him into a debate between drug makers and the agency that regulates them.

• "New device could knock out old dialysis technology" (2011)

Shuvo Roy has all the makings for the world's first implantable artificial kidney, thanks to nanotechnology and a web of nationwide collaborations.

All he needs now is $20 million.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Transcept, partner sue to protect new sleep drug from generic competitors