HE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY has as its objective the discovery of important new medicines and vaccines to prevent and alleviate diseases and to improve health and the quality of life. Merck has been doing that successfully since 1933, when George W. Merck opened the first laboratory in Rahway, New Jersey. Through the efforts of its research scientists, the company has contributed drugs and vacci...

Disclosure: Prof Simon Travis has been an advisor to, in receipt of educational or research grants from, or an invited lecturer for AbbVie, Amgen, Asahi, Biogen, Boehringer Ingelheim, BMS, Cosmo, Elan, Ferring, FPRT Bio, Genentech/Roche, Genzyme, Glenmark, GW Pharmaceuticals, Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Ocera, Pfizer, Receptos, Shire, Santarus, SigmoidPharma, Synthon, Takeda, Tillotts...

This paper reports the results of a study designed in close collaboration with Merck-Medco to identify key barriers to the success of their customer relationship management. To identify the key factors, we first used focus groups of principle users of the system to brainstorm and generate a list of scenarios and issues. A team of managers, supervisors and customer service representatives then c...

We thank Luca Berga, Christian Garavaglia and Nicola Lacetera for their invaluable contribution to the development of the model. We thank the Merck Foundation for its support through the Epris (European Pharmaceutical Regulation and Innovation Systems) Project. 2

In type 2 diabetes, impaired insulin signaling leads to hyperglycemia and other metabolic abnormalities. To study a new class of antidiabetic agents, we compared two small, nonpeptide molecules that activate insulin receptor (IR) beta-subunit tyrosine kinase activity: Merck L7, a direct IR agonist, and Telik's TLK16998, an IR sensitizer. In rat hepatoma cells (HTCs) that overexpress the IR (HTC...