Galena Bio Pays Fine in Kickback Case

Galena Biopharma has agreed to pay the federal government more than $7.55 million to resolve allegations under the civil False Claims Act that it paid kickbacks to doctors to induce them to prescribe its fentanyl-based drug Abstral. The government contends that the company provided 85 free meals to doctors and staff from a single, high-prescribing practice; paid doctors $5,000, and speakers $6,000 to attend a Galena “advisory board;” and paid $92,000 to a physician-owned pharmacy under a performance-based rebate agreement, according to a Department of Justice press release. “Two of the doctors who received remuneration from Galena were tried, convicted and later sentenced to prison in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama following a jury trial of, among other counts, offenses relating to their prescriptions of Abstral,” it says.