After protracted legal battling, GSK has agreed to pay up to $2.2 billion to settle most of the pending lawsuits that claimed a discontinued version of the Zantac heartburn medication caused cancer. The settlement covers roughly 80,000 cases, or 93% of the suits that were outstanding in state courts around the U.S.

At the same time, the company agreed to pay $70 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit that was filed by Valisure, an independent laboratory that alleged GSK concealed the link between the medication and a carcinogen for nearly four decades. The agreement is subject to approval by the U.S. Department of Justice. GSK did not admit to any liability in either settlement.

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The litigation was sparked after the Food and Drug Administration in 2020 asked manufacturers — including Sanofi, Pfizer, and Boehringer Ingelheim, as well as GSK — to pull Zantac off the market over mounting concerns that its active ingredient, ranitidine, could degrade into an organic chemical called NDMA, over time or when exposed to heat.

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