Analysts are busy jawboning yesterday morning about the side effect Amgen revealed cropped up in a large, late-stage study of its bone drug known as D-mab for breast cancer patients whose disease has spread to the bones. It's known as osteonecrosis of the jaw, or ONJ, for short. The jaw decay is a known side effect with another type of popular drugs for osteoporosis, like Novartis' (NVS) Zometa, which was the drug Amgen (AMGN) used in this head-to-head study with D-mab.

AMGN shares are up huge on the data showing D beat Z. Many analysts think the kind of dual-purpose drug could become a billion-dollar-plus blockbuster. The FDA is scheduled to first decide whether to approve it for osteoporosis in October.

Could a carrot-chomping Bugs Bunny become a drug pitchman? Well, maybe, if the small Israeli company Protalix BioTherapeutics (PLX) could pay Warner Brothers enough money for Bugs' services. PLX also needs to first win FDA approval of its drug for the rare, genetic Gaucher disease. And today that's looking like it could happen sooner rather than later.

Protalix announced this morning that the FDA has approached the company about possibly making the late-stage experimental drug available to certain patients under a special expanded access program before it's even formally approved. The agency is reacting to the recent setback suffered by biotech giant Genzyme (GENZ), which is having manufacturing issues at the plant that makes GENZ's very expensive, but widely used blockbuster Gaucher drug, Cerezyme. Apparently the agency is trying to avoid the impact of a potential shortage of treatments.

Shares of Sanofi-Aventis (SNY) are getting a little investor injection on the back of the emergency release of the Lantus diabetic insulin studies late last Friday.

The stock had fallen about 10 percent late last week on rumors that reports were about to be published in a medical journal identifying a suspected higher risk of cancer with Lantus, the world's top-selling insulin.

Shares of the French drugmaker are getting pummeled over at least three analyst reports identifying a leak about a study or studies that could go public soon. Their research suggests the data is related to a suspected or "theoretical" higher cancer risk associated with SNY's Lantus.

Sanofi-Aventis (SNY) issued a statement defending the safety of Lantus, which it claims has been established in large clinical trials and in the monitoring of patients who've used it over the several years it's been on the market.

Man, it's gotta hurt when the publicly-traded company you've been leading for years announces you're stepping down and investors pop the champagne corks.

Shares of several of the big medical device makers were participating in yesterday's rally, so it's hard to tell if Boston Scientific (BSX) was just getting swept up in that or whether the fact that it was among the most actively traded stocks on the NYSE and the biggest percentage gainer in the group is due to its news yesterday. After 10 years at the helm, BSX CEO Jim Tobin is retiring and the former Chairman and CEO of Zimmer Holdings (ZMH), which makes replacement parts for people, will take his place on July 13th.

ACC, ADA, AHA, ASCO, ICAD, TCT. That's just a handful of the acronyms and abbreviations for scientific and medical conferences that I've attended over the years. But this year I might be able to add RITA to my dance card. I'd never heard of her (it) before yesterday morning when I got this press release from Crucell (CRXL), which owns technology for faster, better, cheaper vaccine manufacturing.

Shares of the Dutch company are higher on the news of positive mid-stage test results for its experimental rabies vaccine. Sanofi-Aventis (SNY) is a partner on the product. CRXL says researchers will present the detailed data at RITA this fall. That'd be the "Rabies in the Americas" conference. Who knew there was such a thing? I can just see and hear it now: "I'm Mike Huckman live at 'The Rabies in the Americas' conference in Quebec and coming up next on CNBC...." The crest for RITA, by the way, cracks me up with the raccoon peering down at the dog and skunk.

Consumers may be saving more and spending less, but big pharma is on a shopping spree. And I'm not talking about the really big deals including Roche buying Genentech, Pfizer (PFE) buying Wyeth (WYE) and Merck (MRK) buying Schering-Plough (SGP). I'm talking about the two deals that have been done in less than a week between major drug companies and baby biotechs specializing in oncology. It's what one analyst recently coined the growing "P & A" trend in biopharma. It's not so much about mergers and acquisitions (M & A) as it is about partnerships and acquisitions.

First, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) ponied up nearly a billion bucks for Cougar Biotech (CGRB). And it did it before seeing late-stage test results to determine if CGRB's prostate cancer drug extends lives, which is the new gold standard in oncology treatments. That might have raised a few eyebrows. But it's a relatively small gamble for a company as big as JNJ. And one source tells me JNJ may have quickly pulled the trigger because several other companies were courting Cougar. As that person said, "There's a lot of hand-wringing and crying over spilled milk going on." In other words, you snooze, you lose.

This fall ABC is launching a new show with Courtney Cox called "Cougar Town." Courtney was one of my favorite "Friends" stars and cougars are certainly a hot cultural phenomenon. Could cougars be five minutes ago by the time the show premieres? Perhaps. But maybe ABC has a hit on its hands. New TV shows are always a roll of the dice.

And so is Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ) journey into "Cougar Town."

It's going to be a crazy busy, stressful couple of weeks. A shareholder meeting, a medical meeting, then another shareholder meeting and finally another medical meeting.

Next Wednesday is the Amylin Pharmaceuticals (AMLN) annual shareholder get together. And it promises to be a barnburner. Major activist investors Carl Icahn and Eastbourne Capital are trying to take over the Board of Directors at the biopharma company that makes the diabetes drug Byetta. Their intentions beyond that are the subject of heated debate between the company and the challengers. At the center of the fight is the fate of the once-a-week version of Byetta, which AMLN and its partners Eli Lilly (LLY) and Alkermes (ALKS) recently submitted for FDA approval. The war of words is escalating day by day.

Product placement in movies and TV shows has become commonplace. Usually it's a casual shot that blends into the scenery, sometimes it's a little more obvious - i.e. the Coke (KO) cups on the American Idol judges' desk - and occasionally it hits you in the face. That was the case last night when I was being a couch potato watching the season finale of ABC's (DIS) "Grey's Anatomy" on TiVo last night.

Essentially two commercials for Intiuitive Surgical (ISRG), the company that makes operating-room robots, were embedded in the script for the show. And I can't imagine the actors were happy about having to pretend over-the-top effusiveness and to recite lines that were so blatantly written into the episode because ISRG was paying for the storyline. Although, these days maybe the actors are resigned to the fact that this kind of stuff helps pay their salaries.

Pfizer (PFE) Chairman and CEO Jeff Kindler last year repeatedly said big deals in big pharma don't work. But, he added, he'd never say never. And sure enough, this year Kindler's buying Wyeth (WYE).

But here we have the Chairman and CEO of one of the two remaining unmarried big pharmas (Eli Lilly (LLY) and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY)) putting his opinion of a mega-merger in black and white on the Op-Ed page of yesterday's Wall Street Journal.

This takes the prize for the most dangerously optimistic acronym for a clinical trial. But MADIT (pronounced "made it") made it. Some folks with a lot of chutzpah at Guidant, now owned by Boston Scientific (BSX), apparently came up with the name for their big studies on implantable cardio defibrillators (ICDs).

What if MADIT failed?

What does it say when a drugmaker hires a Goldman Sachs investment banker as its next Chief Financial Officer?

That's the question I'm asking after Novartis (NVS) announced that it's tapped a managing director of investment banking at Goldman Sachs, Jonathan Symonds, as its CFO apprentice.

Imagine my surprise when I got an email over the weekend from "Diabetic Investor" newsletter editor David Kliff informing me that Amylin Pharmaceuticals (AMLN) is quoting me in a letter to shareholders.

AMLN is engaged in an escalating proxy fight with billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn and another big investment firm, Eastbourne. The challengers want to install their own people on the Board of Directors and to presumably sell the company.

A new study shows that Merck's (MRK) Gardasil vaccine protects some young women from a strain of a sexually transmitted disease that can lead to cervical cancer for nearly a decade.

Up until now, there's only been evidence that the series of three shots for the human papillomavirus offers coverage out to five years. The new results from a test on nearly 300 women between 16 and 26 years old indicates the vaccine is still working for, on average, eight-and-a-half years. But overall, protection ranged from 7.2 years to as long as 9.5 years. The findings apply to just one of the four HPV strains covered by Gardasil, but it is one of the strains that is a leading cause of cervical cancer.

Wednesday, Vanda Pharmaceuticals (VNDA) had a market value of $28 million. That's way too small to mention on CNBC, here on the blog or even on Twitter.

But exceptions can be made when a company, even one that little, has real news.

It's a new world.

Before Roche (RHHBY.PK) bought Genentech, stock-moving drug development milestones for DNA were closely followed by the news media, analysts and investors. But because the Swiss drugmaker Roche only trades over-the-counter in the U.S., the information isn't as "actionable" as it used to be when DNA was around.

You gotta love a good proxy fight, especially when you have one of the kings of shareholder activism, Carl Icahn, in the ring. And lately, I've been getting bombarded by emails from representatives of all corners.

Yesterday I wrote about the timing of the back-to-back press releases out of Amylin Pharmaceuticals (AMLN). The first one announced a significant sales force cut and the second one heralded the earlier-than-expected filing for FDA approval of the once-a-week diabetes drug Byetta. Eli Lilly (LLY) and Alkermes (ALKS) are partners with AMLN on the long-acting tummy injection. Tuesday afternoon on CNBC's "Street Signs," LLY's Chairman and CEO John Lechleiter told David Faber he expects the FDA to take about a year to review the application.

Fiesta time started a little earlier than expected for investors in Eli Lilly (LLY), Amylin Pharmaceuticals (AMLN) and Alkermes (ALKS). The companies had said they would file for Food and Drug Administration approval of the once-a-week version of the diabetes drug Byetta in the second quarter, but most analysts thought that meant June.

Tuesday morning the trio announced they're doing it that day. An earlier-than-anticipated filing might mean the timeline for potential agency approval of the drug also gets moved up. Most seem to think a decision could come early next year. But as "Diabetic Investor" newsletter editor David Kliff told me, "God knows when with the FDA these days."

Whenever a politician, government agency or company puts out news late on a Friday, chances are it probably isn't good or it's stuff they'd like to just slip under the door. That's when they like to dump stuff that will usually get less attention over a weekend news cycle when readers/viewers are distracted and/or catch reporters after their deadlines. Of course, they'll deny the ulterior motive, but it's a tried and true media relations practice.

So, should investors be all that surprised that Friday evening, May 1st, Dendreon (DNDN) revealed that eight top execs and Directors unloaded a bunch of stock on April 29th and 30th, the two days following the release of the positive test results on the company's prostate cancer treatment?