A Shanghai court has put on trial six people accused of making an unlicensed version of the anti-bird flu drug Tamiflu, newspapers and the court announced today.

US companies, which have been reluctant to part with their mountain of cash, may start spending more of it - and spur the economy in the process.

Ireland must focus on highly-skilled R&D employment because it can not compete effectively with other low-cost economies for manufacturing jobs anymore, Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin declared today.

Pfizer Ireland is to make a €100m investment at one of its key Cork plants over the next two years, but shed 25 full-time positions.

THE managing director of Schering Plough’s West Cork production facility is to leave the company in a surprise move, it emerged last night.

PFIZER Inc’s 1,800 plus Irish workers are bracing themselves for possible job losses, when the company announces global cost cutting measures next week, which could result in the loss of 10,000 posts worldwide.

Drug giant Pfizer is to stop advertising its best-selling arthritis pain reliever Celebrex after a study showed high doses of it were associated with an increased heart attack risk.

PFIZER chief executive Hank McKinnell yesterday said doctors should be made aware of the health risks in prescribing Celebrex to their patients, but the company does not plan to recall its popular arthritis drug.

Pfizer Inc shares slumped by as much as 8.3% after a doctor said in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that drugmakers must prove that medications such as Pfizer’s Celebrex don’t carry the same risk of heart problems as Merck & Co’s Vioxx.

Merck & Co, the maker of the Zocor cholesterol medicine, said first-quarter profit rose 4.8% as the company cut costs.

Republican and Democratic US senators have introduced legislation that would make it legal for Americans to import prescription drugs from licensed pharmacies in Canada and other countries.

SHARES in Galen Holdings increased by 3.81% yesterday after the company announced better-than-expected results in its final quarter.

PHARMACEUTICAL companies like Wyeth are scaling back or ending research into antibiotics due to a lack of profit potential, even as infections are becoming more resistant to current treatments, microbiologists said.

ELI LILLY, the maker of prozac antidepressant pills, raised its 2003 earnings forecast on demand for psychiatric medications including zyprexa for schizophrenia and new drugs such as cialis to treat impotence.

The Nasdaq composite index notched up its longest winning streak in more than three years today after strong gains in factory orders and worker productivity fuelled investor expectations of a rebounding US economy.

IRISH shares, spurred by overnight gains in New York, rose yesterday to push the ISEQ up by €1.5 billion this week.

PFIZER INC’S fourth-quarter earnings climbed 46% as the world’s largest drug-maker sold more of the epilepsy treatment neurontin and the cholesterol medicine lipitor.

Inverness Medical Innovations Inc said it has obtained a preliminary injunction against Pfizer Inc, based on a finding that Pfizer's e.p.t. pregnancy tests, manufactured for Pfizer by Apogent Inc's subsidiary ABI, may infringe its patent.

Pfizer Inc's Pregabalin was shown to provide improvement of pain in patients with fibromyalgia, a chronic and debilitating pain syndrome, according to a study presented yesterday at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology.

IT’S a bargain... A thrifty pensioner has come up with a cunning plan to boost his sex life and his pension.

SWISS food giant Nestle appeared yesterday to be moving more quickly than expected towards a multi-billion dollar bid for American chocolate icon Hershey Foods Corp, boosting Hershey’s shares.