While reports about tech giant Amazon meeting generic drugmakers made the rounds, companies like Pfizer (PFE – Free Report) and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.’s (TEVA – Free Report) were in the news with the former reporting late-stage data and the latter announcing leadership and organizational changes.

Recap of the Week’s Most Important Stories

Is Amazon in Talks with Generic Drugmakers? According to a CNBC report, tech giant Amazon is in preliminary discussions with generic drugmakers including Mylan (MYL – Free Report) and Novartis’s generic arm, Sandoz, about entering the pharmacy market. With not much information being available, there is a lot of speculation and discussion among industry watchers about the way the tech giant is planning to enter the market – as a drug wholesaler or a retailer.

Pfizer, Merck KGaA’s Bavencio Fails in Late-Stage Study: Pfizer and Merck KGaA suffered a setback in their efforts to expand the label of their checkpoint inhibitor, Bavencio (avelumab) with the therapy failing to meet the primary endpoint of superior overall survival (“OS”) compared with physician’s choice of chemotherapy. The late-stage study was being conducted to evaluate Bavencio for the third-line treatment of unresectable, recurrent or metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction (“GEJ”) adenocarcinoma patients whose disease progressed following two prior therapeutic regimens, regardless of PD-L1 expression.

The companies continue to evaluate Bavencio in the first-line switch maintenance setting for gastric cancer. According to information provided by the companies, gastric cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the world and the third most common cause of cancer death. With survival in advanced disease being poor and usually less than a year, the third-line setting is a difficult-to-treat population.

Leadership & Organizational Changes at Teva: Teva’s new CEO has announced changes in the organization as well as leadership structure of the company. A key change is that the generics and specialty medicines segments will now operate as a single segment across three regions – North America, Europe and Growth Markets. The Generic R&D and Specialty R&D organizations will also be merged into one global group while a newly formed Marketing & Portfolio function will be set up. With these changes, Dr. Michael Hayden, Dr. Rob Koremans and Dipankar Bhattacharjee will be exiting Teva effective Dec 31, 2017. Several new appointments were also announced while a detailed restructuring plan will be unveiled in mid-December.