Drug Company Jettisons Drug Biz

From a number of sources on Abbott's announcement yesterday to split off its brand-name pharmaceutical business:

The Chicago Sun-Times swallows the PR version.

Forbes's Matthew Herper rationalizes the company split in relatively comprehensive fashion (for a blog, anyway).

Derek Lowe appears on target (as usual) about what biz folks think of the biz of brand-name drugs (not much).

And the In Vivo blog asks what the name of the currently unnamed split-off should be (most online wags favor "Costello").

The fact that the Abbott name stays with the medical-device/baby-formula/generic-drug company, and that eternal CEO Miles White stays with "Abbott" speaks volumes about whatever confidence, or lack thereof, folks at Abbott (or anywhere else, for that matter) have in the future of prescription brand-name pharmaceuticals.

Abbott's (or Costello's?) far-and-away leading revenue generator has been Humira, a TNF inhibitor for rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease with $6.5 billion in annual sales. But Humira's got growing competition, and Abbott doesn't have a particularly robust product list or pipeline (despite what Abbott would like potential buyers to believe). That said, any shoppers interested in diversifying their brand-name portfolio (Merck, Roche, or Bayer AG, according to Bloomberg) will essentially be buying the right to profit off of Humira sales...for as long as they last.

For whatever reason, The Street really dug yesterday's announcement.