Longtime Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer has taken a public stand on Sanofi’s low ball offer: “At $69 [a share, the current offer], the company is not for sale,” he tells the Wall Street Journal. In fact, he expects the board to open up the process and seek a White Knight, or at least some new offer that would drive the price up high enough to whet Termeer’s interest.

Termeer was countering Sanofi’s “bear hug” letter, released on Sunday. As the pharma giant stopped short of going hostile, the response from Genzyme has been cool but measured. Genzyme’s shares were driven down by a highly public manufacturing pratfall. But the big biotech has been trying hard to change the story line to get credit for a turnaround.

“This is not a fixer-upper, this is beachfront property,” Termeer insisted to the Boston Globe, and virtually every other major media outlet he could reach on Monday.

So far, though, Sanofi has shown little actual interest in bidding against itself in an effort to sweep Genzyme’s shareholders off their feet. This new response from Termeer isn’t likely to quicken the pace either, unless he inspires some other big player out there to pick up the phone. In its glory days, Genzyme shares traded in the low 80s. But for all the back-and-forth in the business press, there’s been little change in either of the two companies’ positions since the story broke. And some analysts believe Termeer’s time is running out.

“He’s caught between a plant in Allston that is a disaster, Icahn in bed with him and Sanofi banging on the door,” the University of Michigan’s Erik Gordon tells Bloomberg. “If Sanofi doesn’t fire him I think Icahn will.”

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U.S. judges are giving AstraZeneca more time to settle Seroquel litigation, rather than sending thousands of consolidated cases back to their home courts for trial. As Bloomberg reports, a judicial panel voted to let the cases stay in Florida for the time being, where U.S. District Judge Anne Conway has been overseeing pretrial work–and court-mandated mediation has been bearing fruit.

“A remand at this juncture would likely disrupt the settlement dialog,” Conway writes in an order asking the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to let the cases stay put. If the lawsuits were sent back for trial, that could “stall negotiations altogether,” she writes.

AstraZeneca has settled some two-thirds of the Seroquel cases pending through that court-ordered mediation. The company says it will continue to work with the mediator now that 6,000 cases will stay put. So far, that mediation has yielded settlement payouts of only about $11,000 per patient, much less than analysts had predicted.

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Pfizer has opted to settle a Prempro case rather than brave a punitive damages trial. It would have been the second such trial for Donna Scroggin’s claims that the hormone replacement therapy–which Pfizer inherited in its buyout of Wyeth–caused her breast cancer. A previous jury awarded her $27.1 million in punitive damages, but that verdict was overturned on appeal.

“It makes sense for Pfizer to settle because of the potential for exposure if the punitive-damages issue goes back before another jury,” Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond Law School professor, told Bloomberg. The settlement terms weren’t released.

Earlier this month, Pfizer prevailed in a Prempro case in Philadelphia; the jury ruled that the menopause drug didn’t cause two women’s cancers. According to the news service, Wyeth lost seven of the 12 Prempro cases that went to jury trial, but succeeded in getting some damage awards reduced or verdicts tossed altogether. About 3,000 suits have been dismissed before trial, Pfizer says.

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Is Big Pharma due for another layoff? That’s what the Swiss newspaper Sonntag is reporting, saying that Roche is putting the final touches on a global job-cutting plan. Sources tell the paper that a decision is expected at a scheduled management meeting this week. Roche itself tells Reuters that no layoff news will come that soon.

Sonntag’s sources say that at a recent management meeting, Roche officials discussed “massive” job cuts across the company’s pharma division. The cuts would hit sales and marketing, R&D, manufacturing and management. ”This will not only concern a few hundred people but many more,” one source tells the paper. “And the job cuts will not be made in one single country but on a worldwide scale.”

The company isn’t as willing to talk as Sonntag’s unnamed sources are. “It’s too early to speculate on this,” Roche spokeswoman Claudia Schmitt tells Bloomberg. “There will be no decisions made this week.” Another Roche spokesperson tells Reuters, ”We are always working to improve productivity and will continue to do so. But it is too early to speculate on potential job cuts.”

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The recent leaks from Sanofi’s camp all point to the same conclusion: Don’t look for the pharma giant to pay any rich premiums for Genzyme. Today, the views of two big Sanofi investors–L’Oreal and Total–are being put on display, offering to douse any heated speculation about how high the bidding could rise.

One of Reuters’ sources even notes that Sanofi could be better off bidding on Shire, a rival to Genzyme which wouldn’t cost as much to acquire. Meanwhile, Genzyme’s sources have been opening up, telling the news wire that it would take a bid of $75 to get negotiations under way, with a target price of $80 for any acceptable bid.

CNBC’s David Faber, meanwhile, is reporting that Sanofi is lining up its team to go hostile on Genzyme, although the company hasn’t decided whether to pull that trigger. Sanofi has recruited a proxy solicitor, Faber reports, and its bankers are querying Genzyme investors on what price they might accept.

Bloomberg got the market’s juices running with its report yesterday that Sanofi might even switch its focus to Celgene or Allergan if it can’t pick up Genzyme for $70 a share. But with rumors and insider reports the only clues to work with, some analysts felt as if they were getting played.

“It worked for a second,” OrbiMed’s Sven Borho tells Reuters. “There was a lot of shouting in our office, but then a minute later everyone said, ‘nice try, but Sanofi is not going to go and buy Allergan or Celgene instead.’” Some analysts are likely to feel that the speculation on Shire could be just another ruse in the gamesmanship on display this week.

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Sanofi-Aventis appears to be digging in around $70 as its top price for Genzyme –a figure that won’t spur much enthusiasm at the board of the big biotech company.

Bloomberg is the latest to fire a new salvo of insider news regarding the behind-the-scenes merger talks now under way, quoting sources who say that Sanofi has decided to cap its bid at $70, just slightly higher than its initial $69 offer. Reuters earlier reported that Sanofi’s board has approved a $70 bid, and there’s considerable reluctance to move up from that point. Bloomberg also reports that Sanofi may look at alternative M&A targets if Genzyme doesn’t start warming up to a buyout.

There’s been no indication  that Genzyme would be at all interested in $70. While its share price had been hammered by a string of manufacturing woes, execs and investors still fondly recall when the stock traded in the low $80s. This latest leak may be calculated to help focus those same execs and investors on what Genzyme’s stock price might look like if Sanofi loses interest in a deal. Genzyme shares slid to $66.02 this morning.

Bloomberg’s insiders at Sanofi obligingly highlighted three potential targets for takeover bids: Allergan, Bausch & Lomb and Celgene.

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A Philadelphia jury has determined that Pfizer’s menopause drug Prempro didn’t cause breast cancer in two women. The plaintiffs in the case had been seeking at least $100,000 in damages.

The women were among roughly 9,900 who have filed suits against Wyeth, the Wall Street Journal reports. The plaintiffs maintain Prempro and the related Premarin have caused them harm, and that Wyeth failed to properly warn about the risks. Pfizer inherited the litigation when it acquired Wyeth last year.

Pfizer expressed sympathy for the plaintiffs, but emphasized “the vast majority of women who take hormone therapy do not get breast cancer,” Bloomberg notes.

Pfizer and Wyeth haven’t always been on the winning end in Prempro cases. Back in February, a Philadelphia jury ordered Wyeth to pay $6 million in punitive damages to an Alabama woman who developed breast cancer after taking the company’s menopause drugs, bringing the total award in the case to $9.45 million.

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Eli Lilly’s latest pratfall in the Alzheimer’s arena could cause plenty of sleepless nights in the burgeoning research field. As Bloomberg reports, Lilly’s Alzheimer’s therapy works much like a number of other therapies in the pipeline–and a disaster for one could spell big trouble for all.

For decades many researchers have operated under the assumption that the buildup of amyloid in the brain causes Alzheimer’s, a memory-wasting disease that is claiming millions of new victims. But the assumption has never been proven, and with Lilly’s semagacestat not only failing to treat the disease but evidently worsening its symptoms, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Elan, Bristol-Myers Squibb and others could well be on the wrong track.

“We define Alzheimer’s by [the presence of] plaques and tangles. There’s very good evidence that the plaques play a strong role in familial Alzheimer’s, and in animal models they are toxic,” P. Murali Doraiswamy, a psychiatry professor at Duke, tells the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog. “But what we don’t understand is the interaction between the [plaques and tangles], the timeline of events and how they interact with other things, such as inflammation and oxidative stress.”

At Forbes, Robert Langreth notes researchers’ concern that if Lilly’s drug successfully cleared amyloid without helping patients, then everyone working on that class will likely be deeply worried. The bottom line: everyone working with the same target as Eli Lilly will now be operating under a cloud that can only be dispelled when a developer can conclusively demonstrate success against one of the biggest targets in the biotech world.

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Sigma Pharmaceuticals was playing its cards close to the vest last week when it denied a higher buyout offer from South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare. Aspen might not have hiked its offer for the entire company, but it had pitched a new, higher bid for Sigma’s pharma division–and that offer has been accepted.

The South African company will pick up Sigma’s drugs unit for A$900 million ($806 million) in a deal lauded as a win. “We think Aspen more likely than not got a good deal,” David Low, a Deutsche Bank healthcare analyst, tells Bloomberg. “They’ve taken on some risk with generics, but a number of the other parts of the business have solid earnings and an attractive outlook.”

Aspen intends to use its newly beefed-up Australian business as a jumping-off point for growth in the Asia Pacific region, according to a company statement. The deal will give Aspen about one-fourth of Australia’s generics market, and is the country’s largest drug manufacturer.

Any growth at Aspen also benefits GlaxoSmithKline, which bought a 16 percent stake in the company last year. As part of that deal, Aspen took on the job of distributing GSK’s drugs in South Africa. It’s unclear at this point whether Aspen will further extend the reach of GSK’s products via the Sigma deal.

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It appears AstraZeneca has settled another batch of Seroquel lawsuits, again for a price tag of some $10,000 per plaintiff. Bloomberg reports that the drugmaker agreed to pay $55 million to resolve about 5,500 lawsuits, including the 4,000 cases mentioned in a recent regulatory filing. The company confirmed the settlements but said the terms are confidential.

These settlements, reached as part of court-ordered mediation in 26,000 Seroquel liability suits, could soon be followed by more. Spokesman Tony Jewell tells Bloomberg that mediation sessions are scheduled throughout the summer, and sources tell the news service that AZ is trying to settle as many cases as possible for $10,000 each.

Analysts said the “modest” amount of these settlements reflects the plaintiffs’ difficulty in proving that the atypical antipsychotic actually caused their diabetes. ”The real issue is proving liability,” Matrix Corporate Capital’s Navid Malik tells Bloomberg.

But some lawyers aren’t happy with the $10,000. Attorney Ken Bailey says his plaintiffs are planning to go to trial. ”We have not been involved in any negotiations and expect most of our cases to end up in the federal court in Boston,” Bailey says. Whether those suits will bear bigger fruit for the plaintiffs remains to be seen; so far, courts have tended to side with AstraZeneca, dismissing three cases and returning one jury verdict in favor of the company.

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