cancer drug

Samsung Electronics is known for its smartphones, TVs and memory chips. Now it wants to tackle biopharmaceuticals, on Friday announcing a new joint venture to produce drugs to treat cancer and arthritis. Here's why the move could prove an ill-needed distraction for the electronics giant.

Sanofi-Aventis announced its cancer drug candidate iniparib failed in a late-stage clinical trial. Other pharmaceutical companies have also experienced recent setbacks as they scramble to bolster their pipelines ahead of the patent cliff, when they will be forced to compete with cheaper generics.

If gasoline or jobs or milk were in short supply, we'd all know about it. But unknown to most Americans, the country is now in the grips of a life-threatening drug shortage. Medical professionals are quite aware of it, however, and they're deeply concerned.

What's Spectrum's particular allure? Beyond being the subject of takeover rumor, it has two oncology drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration that are already on the market, plus two other promising drugs that are in late-stage clinical trials.

The FDA denied accelerated approval of Roche's trastuzumab-DM1 (T-DM1) license application. T-DM1 is a potential breast cancer treatment. Roche will continue with its trials and plans a global regulatory submission in mid-2012.