Eli Lilly

Shares of pharmaceutical companies Amylin, Alkermes, and Eli Lilly -- partners in a new diabetes drug Bydureon -- have tanked in morning trading as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declined on Tuesday to approve the drug without additional clinical studies.

It's an important question because 5,000 potential lawsuits alleging that vaccines caused autism lurk in the background, and vaccine makers threaten to stop producing the drugs if the suits are allowed.

Global pharmaceutical sales are expected to grow by 5% to 7% in 2011, thanks to robust growth in emerging markets, especially China, as well as new innovative treatments, and despite patent expirations and budget pressures in the developed world.

Federal investigators are looking into allegations that major drug companies, including Merck, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb and GlaxoSmithKline, paid bribes overseas to boost sales and accelerate approvals.

Its total worldwide costs for 2010 are estimated to be $604 billion, or around 1% of the world's GDP, according to World Alzheimer Report 2010 from Alzheimer's Disease International. By 2030, that burden could hit more than $1.1 trillion.

Several recent studies of drugs used to treat and prevent strokes appear to favor AstraZeneca's (AZN) Brilinta and Eli-Lilly's (LLY) Effient over Plavix. Plavix, co-marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) and Sanofi-Aventis (SNY), is the second best-selling drug in the world.

Eli Lilly has halted the development of an Alzheimer's treatment after studies showed the experimental drug not only failed to slow the disease's progression, it actually reduced patients' cognition.