Here are 3 brief news for your quick update:

• Novartis to Pump US$1b R&D Investment in China
• Singapore to Receive US$75m R&D Investment from Abbott 
• H1N1 Pandemic Fear Helps OTC Medicine Sales

• Novartis to Pump US$1b R&D Investment in China
Swiss drug giant Novartis has announced it will invest US$1billion over the next five years in China. The investment will significantly expand Novartis’ R&D capabilities in Shanghai which specializes in basic R&D in prevalent diseases which are common in China. Specific areas of activity focus will be works in analytics and biomarkers, in vivo pharmacology, protein production, characterization and scale-up screening and chemistry and proteomics, genomics and imaging

• Singapore to Receive US$75m R&D Investment from Abbott
 Singapore will become the beneficiary of Abbott’s US$75 million investment for its global R&D centre which will be operational from 2010. The investment will be focusing on the nutritional business to support the rapidly growing nutritional business sector in Asia Pacific. This investment is estimated to add another 70 jobs in 2010.

• H1N1 Pandemic Fear Helps OTC Medicine Sales
Based on an estimate by US market research, Americans are likely to spend some US$3.6 billion on cold, cough and throat medications this year as the outbreak of H1N1 breed fears globally & people are flocking to pharmacies & retail stores to stock up OTC medicines. The same trend was reported in 2005 as US cold, cough & throat remedy sales grew 13.4% when the bird flu was widely reported by the media.
Specifically on global OTC drugs spending,
• Americans will spend more than US$32 billion this year;
• Britons poured £2.6 billion towards such remedies;
• Chinese are expected to spend over ¥58 billion,
• Russians braved the colds to the tune of US$3.4 billion

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