Merck

Denise Morrison said Trump's comments on Tuesday blaming "many sides" for the deadly Charlottesville, Virginia, demonstrations made her reconsider her commitment to the initiative. Johnson & Johnson's CEO Ron Gorsky was also going to leave the panel.

The layoffs impact employees at the company's facilities in Kenilworth, Rahway and North Wales, Pennsylvania.

Drugmaker Merck is buying Afferent Pharmaceuticals, a privately held biotechnology company developing a chronic cough medication.

Patients with hepatitis C have yet another advanced treatment option, as the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a new once-a-day pill developed by drugmaker Merck.

Merck will spend $8.4 billion to buy Cubist Pharmaceuticals and move deeper into treating so-called "superbugs" that have drawn dire warnings from global health organizations.

Merck & Co. on Thursday won the first U.S. approval for a new kind of cancer drug with big advantages over chemotherapy and other older cancer treatments.

Drugmaker Merck says it plans to reduce its global workforce by another 8,500 jobs as part of a plan to cut its annual costs by about $2.5 billion by the end of 2015.

Shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb Inc. and Merck & Co. gained about 4 percent each after the drugmakers announced encouraging results on experimental cancer medicines over the weekend.

A federal panel of medical experts says that an experimental insomnia drug from Merck & Co Inc. appears safe and effective, despite evidence from company trials that the pill can cause daytime sleepiness and difficulty driving.

A Merck & Co. sales representative is suing the drugmaker for at least $100 million, saying Merck doesn't give women equal opportunities for advancement and punishes employees for taking maternity leave.