This Week’s Biotech Highlights

The Cross-Border Biotech Blog had a very blawg-y week this week with three posts on legal issues affecting the biotech world, thanks in part to my lovely and talented legal writer/spouse/editor/CMO Audrey Fried-Grushcow.

I kicked things off with a post on three need-to-know Canadian patent decisions that impact pharma, biotech and generics companies, pulling together three Ogilvy Renault bulletins into one executive-summary-level overview of key recent developments.

Audrey picked up the legal theme with a post noting oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court for a case under the False Claims Act (FCA) in which amici curiae PhRMA and BIO are urging the Supreme Court to limit whistleblower suits.

A second post by Audrey highlighted a recent decision by the Supreme Court of Arkansas that dismissed state tort claims against AstraZeneca. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Wyeth v. Levine that FDA approval does not preempt state tort liability for drug makers, state court decisions like this one will be an important battle ground in pharmaceutical companies’ product liability litigation.

Other posts this week spanned the blog’s usual bench-to-bedside range, with the Friday Science Review by science writer Richard Chan picking up no less than five cool developments from Canadian labs (ranging from stem cells to informatics) and a Biotech Trends post noting novel approaches to commercialization taken by some non-profit foundations. If that’s not enough to satisfy, keep an eye on the Twitter stream @crossborderbio for up-to-the-minute Canadian biotech news.