While You Were Seeding the Bracket

The economy may be going down the tubes (More rate cuts! JPMorgan is buying Bear Stearns for $2/share!) but it least we've got the brackets to take our minds off the misery (The Cornell Big Red drew the Stanford Cardinal in the first round). There's also the will-they-won't-they drama of Pfizer/Shire, and, of course, a big week of conferencing in the offing: up first is BIO-Windhover, followed by Pharmaceutical Strategic Outlook. We'll try to keep you posted from the Grand Hyatt in NYC. What else happened this weekend?

• GSK's mepolizumab (Bosatria) proved effective in a Phase III study by allowing patients to cut down their dose of corticosteroids for treatment of the rare blood disorder hypereosiniphilic syndrome (HES). Results of the 85-patient study were reported at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology in Philadelphia and published in the NEJM on Sunday. The article is here and a companion editorial is here.


• deCODE Genetics and Merck's Merck Research Labs teamed up to map the genetic roots of obesity. The analysis of the gene expression patterns was published sunday in Nature.


• The price of Genzyme's Gaucher disease treatment Cerezyme means patients and docs are thinking carefully about--and often cutting--the therapeutic dose, a phenomenon explained in the New York Times.


• Bristol-Myers is considering the sale of its Mead Johnson baby food business, the FT says, looking for bids in the $7-9 billion range. No word on whether they're making lots of airplane noises and making funny faces at potential suitors, but in our experience that works pretty well when trying to offload puréed carrots.