Sun Pharmaceutical Industries has started the integration of its opiates business in Australia, acquired earlier this year from GlaxoSmithKline, following the completion of the deal.

Sun Pharmaceutical Industries has acquired GlaxoSmithKline's opiates business in Australia – a move that is expected to help the Indian firm build significantly on its interests in the controlled substances space.

With a comparatively small amount of private equity capital raised to date, specialty pharma Yaupon Therapeutics Inc. has quickly managed to establish a four-compound pipeline and to move two of its candidates-one a drug for methamphetamine addiction, the other a topical agent for cutaneous T-cell lymphoma--into the clinic.

Managed care has sent orthopedics companies searching for new ways to lower or justify the costs of bone-repair and replacement. Surgeons have lost the freedom to select favorite products and now look to the bottom line. Companies are trying to use molecular biology and materials advances to develop products that will look and act like natural bone, and so produce better, longer-lasting healing. Yet safety and liability concerns, and memories of past disappointments, are keeping financiers skeptical.