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Novartis pharmaceuticals news

May 6, 2013 7:00 AM UTC

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York filed on April 26 a civil suit against Novartis' Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. subsidiary seeking damages and penalties under the False Claims Act and under the common law for paying kickbacks to doctors for speaker programs. The False Claims Act allows private citizens to bring civil actions on behalf of the U.S. In its complaint, the attorney's office alleges Novartis Pharmaceuticals paid kickbacks to doctors through sham speaker programs from January 2002 through at least November 2011 to induce prescribing Novartis drugs, including hypertension drug Lotrel amlodipine/benazepril, which is a combination of amlodipine, a Ca channel blocker, and benazepril, an ACE inhibitor; diabetes drug Starlix nateglinide, a D-phenylalanine amino acid derivative; and hypertension product Valturna aliskiren/valsartan, which Novartis withdrew from the U.S. market last year. Valturna is a single pill combination of aliskiren, a renin inhibitor, and valsartan, a small molecule angiotensin II receptor (type AT1) antagonist. The complaint alleges the violations led to the submission of false claims to federal healthcare programs including Medicare and Medicaid (see BioCentury, April 23, 2012).

This is the second civil suit brought last month against Novartis by the Southern New York district. The first was filed April 23 and claims Novartis gave kickbacks to at least 20 pharmacies with influence over prescription decisions in exchange for switching transplant patients to Novartis' Myfortic mycophenolic acid from competitor drugs. Myfortic, an enteric-coated mycophenolate sodium, is approved to prevent organ rejection in patients receiving allogeneic renal transplants in combination with cyclosporine and corticosteroids. ...