Patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), or angioplasty, experienced nearly 50 percent less bleeding at 30 days and comparable mortality at one-year when treated with Angiox(R) (bivalirudin) alone compared to unfractionated heparin or enoxaparin plus a glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitor (GPI), according to data from the ACUITY trial.

Meda announced that it had signed an agreement to acquire all shares in MedPointe. This strategic acquisition has now been completed and consolidation of MedPointe starts immediately. Meda plans to give further information on the acquisition and its impact on Meda in the interim report for the third quarter - to be released on 30 October 2007.

The first place in the national competition "Consumer's Laurel 2007" in the category "Drugs for memory improvement" has been won by Krka's Bilobil. As in the last year, also this year Bilobil won the first place in its category.

Journalists Gabriela Navarra from Argentina and Michael Kefalogiannis from Greece won the Novo Nordisk Media Prize 2007 for the best article in lay press and the best TV feature about diabetes, respectively. The awards were presented by the president and CEO of Novo Nordisk, Lars Rebien Sørensen, during a ceremony held on 28 August in Copenhagen.

InferMed, a leading provider of advanced software solutions for clinical research and practice, has appointed Dr Sally Burtles, Director of Drug Development at Cancer Research UK, as an Observer to the Board.

InferMed has a long-standing relationship with Cancer Research UK, and was backed by the charity at its formation in 1999. A research relationship continues with Cancer Research UK, which remains InferMed's largest institutional shareholder.

Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) today announced that the U.S. Federal District Court in Boston granted Amgen's motion for summary judgment and ruled that Roche's pegylated-erythropoietin ("peg-EPO") product will infringe Amgen's EPO pharmaceutical composition patent number 5,955,422. In a separate decision yesterday, the Court also granted summary judgment in favor of Amgen on certain Roche defenses against the patents-in-suit.

Bayer HealthCare and Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that a planned review by an independent data monitoring committee (DMC) found that Nexavar® (sorafenib) tablets significantly improved overall survival, progression free survival and time to progression in an Asia-Pacific regional Phase III trial of patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer. Based on the DMC's recommendation, the trial will be stopped to allow all patients to receive treatment with Nexavar. Data from this study will be submitted for presentation at an upcoming scientific meeting.