Celgene Corp. to pay $280M to settle cancer drug fraud suit
LOS ANGELES — A New Jersey pharmaceutical company has agreed to pay $280 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging it committed fraud by promoting a drug for leprosy and another therapy for unapproved cancer treatments, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday.
The agreement settled claims made in Los Angeles federal court by a former sales manager who said Celgene submitted false claims to Medicare and health care programs in 28 states and Washington, D.C., which were all parties to the settlement.
Beverly Brown had worked as an “immunology specialist” who was trained to aggressively promote Thalomid and Revlimid drugs for cancer treatments that had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Thalomid, another name for thalidomide, a drug prescribed for morning sickness in the 1950s and 1960s that caused severe birth defects, was approved in 1998 for treating about a fraction of the few hundred leprosy cases diagnosed in the United States each year, according to court filings. Revlimid is derived from thalidomide and was a successor to the earlier drug.
Read more: http://triblive.com/business/headlines/12547929-74/celgene-corp-to-pay-280m-to-settle-cancer-drug-fraud-suit
