London - Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline confirmed Thursday that more jobs would be cut from its global workforce of 100,000 to achieve annual cost-savings of 1.7 billion pounds (2.5 billion dollars) by 2011.

The British company, the world's second-biggest pharmaceutical concern, said 2008 turnover fell to 24.4 billion pounds, a drop of 3 per cent from 2007.

Pre-tax profits fell to 6.66 billion pounds last year from 7.45 billion in 2007, the group said. But profits rose by 16 per cent in the last quarter of 2008 to 6.9 billion pounds, on account of the weak pound, results showed.

The US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) has given its final approval to Glenmark Generics Inc. USA (GGI), the US arm of Glenmark Generics Limited (GGL), to market lithium carbonate capsules in variable strengths.

GGI will market the capsules in dosages of 150 mg, 300 mg and 600 mg.

Lithium is used for treating patients suffering from manic episodes of Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar Disorder, Manic (DSM-III) is equivalent to Manic Depressive illness, Manic, in the older DSM-II terminology.

New York  - Pfizer faces a shareholder lawsuit over its takeover of multi-billion dollar rival Wyeth, with the smaller firm's stockholders alleging the deal undervalues the company, Bloomberg financial news reported Friday.

The world's largest pharmaceuticals maker Pfizer Inc announced Monday that it would purchase Wyeth in a deal worth 68 billion dollars.

The suit filed by Wyeth shareholders in a Newark, New Jersey court on Tuesday alleges the firm's directors breached their duty by not getting a better price.

London  -

The Chandigarh-based Venus Remedies’ manufacturing facilities at Baddi Campus has secured Good Manufacturing Practices certificate from the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of Iran which will enable the Company to export its products to Iranian market.

Technical analysts believe that this is a major breakthrough for the Company as Iran holds a significant share in Middle Eastern Pharmaceutical market and would open door to other Middle Eastern Markets as well.

Syngene International, a unit of Indian biotechnology major BIOCON Group, has informed that it will offer fully integrated drug discovery services by partnering with Sapient Discovery, a US based Biotechnology Company.

Sapient Discovery uses integrated, proprietary computational and experimental laboratory technologies, and cellular biology and proprietary data mining to accelerate the drug discovery and optimization processes.