By Anette Breindl Science Editor Researchers have created a mouse with a reporter gene that appears to light up at the earliest stages of tumor development, regardless of the tissue type in which the tumor is developing. "It really does seem to work in every malignancy we've tested," Norman Sharpless told BioWorld Today, which makes the mouse in question a broadly useful tool to study the earliest stages of tumor development. The reporter is a luciferase gene that reports expression of the tumor
By Nuala Moran Staff Writer LONDON – The European Medicines Agency's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has had another Glybera moment, turning down the rare disease drug Raxone (idebenone) by a narrow majority, despite the rapporteurs on an expert committee recommending approval of the drug, which treats a hereditary cause of blindness. "We're not disclosing the size of the majority against, but we do know, and I can confirm it's very narrow," Thomas Meier, CEO of Raxone's
By Peter Winter BioWorld Insight Editor The "new normal" is not only causing big pharma firms to adapt their business strategies to current realities (see the cover story in this issue), but it also has cascaded down to impact companies which are just starting out on their journey of drug development. The "new normal" might not seem that much different from previous periods of fiscal constraints the biotech sector has experienced during its history. However, back then there was an expectation
By Anette Breindl Science Editor Autoimmune diseases are one area where it's a man's world. "Many autoimmune diseases are much more frequent in females," Jayne Danska told BioWorld Today. "That's been known for decades. But we don't have any insight into how to take that insight and do something useful for women with it." In the Jan 18, 2012, issue of Science, Danska, who is at the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute in Toronto, and her colleagues presented evidence that one way to do
By Cormac Sheridan Staff Writer Although Galapagos NV is best known for its whopper of an alliance with AbbVie Inc. for its JAK inhibitor, GLPG0634, the company's rapidly growing drug discovery services business is set to expand further in 2013, following the acquisition of Cangenix Ltd., a UK-based specialist in structure-based discovery, and the establishment of its Fidelta unit in Croatia as an externally focused services arm. Mechelen, Belgium-based Galapagos is paying £1 million (US$1.6
By Staff Reports SAN FRANCISCO – The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference is always bigger than life and full of memorable moments. This year was no different. Here, members of BioWorld Today's team share vignettes captured during the jostling, cajoling, schmoozing and snarking that enlivened the Westin St. Francis and every nearby nook and cranny for four overindulging, sleep-deprived days and nights. The Mood CEOs seemed more casual and upbeat. There was a sense of hunkering down, sticking to the
By Marie Powers Staff Writer SAN FRANCISCO – Improving economic indicators portending a positive year for biotech was the early theme of the 31st annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Doug Braunstein, JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s vice chairman, noted in opening remarks that the size of the conference has grown from 21 presenting companies to 398 companies this year, with a combined market capitalization of more than $3 trillion. The 2013 conference also boasts 8,600 registered attendees and 7,700
By Marie Powers Staff Writer SAN FRANCISCO – Ironwood Pharmaceuticals Inc. played to a packed house Monday afternoon following the luncheon keynote by journalist Bob Woodward at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Though the celebrated Woodward drew a capacity crowd in the Grand Ballroom at the Westin St. Francis, Ironwood CEO Peter Hecht, along with Thomas McCourt, chief commercial officer and senior vice president of marketing and sales, attracted their own respectable following as
By Peter Winter Editor, BioWorld Insight SAN FRANCISCO – For more than a decade now the technologies associated with the regenerative medicine and cell therapy sectors have been hailed as the "future of medicine." While that lofty projection still holds true, investors have started to become impatient with companies developing therapies and their slow rate of progress, a fact acknowledged by Geoff MacKay, president and CEO of Organogenesis Inc., and the incoming chairman of the Washington-based
By Randy Osborne Staff Writer SAN FRANCISCO – At the lectern and away, talks at the 31st Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference are sure to concern the steadily worsening revenue shortfall, and how major pharma firms might satisfy profit-hungry shareholders as more casualties topple down the patent cliff. The bellwether meeting, which opens today, long has been a venue where the beginnings of such solutions – in the form of deals with biotech companies offering innovative solutions – might be
By Cormac Sheridan Staff Writer Phenex Pharmaceuticals AG and Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Biotech Inc., have thrown in their lot together in a combined effort to develop antagonists of retinoic acid-related orphan receptor gamma (RORγt) for inflammatory disease. J&J, of New Brunswick, N.J., could pay Phenex up to $135 million in an undisclosed up-front payment and development milestones for molecules emerging from the collaboration. The total potential value of the deal is actually
By Brian Orelli BioWorld Insight Contributing Writer As biotech executives look to get off the treadmill of financing their companies from milestone to milestone, at-the-market (ATM) offerings have become more popular. According to Brinson Patrick Securities Corp., use of ATM offerings by life sciences companies reached a record high in the third quarter. During this period, 20 companies raised more than $112 million, nearly three times the amount raised in the year-ago quarter. It's been a
By Marie Powers Staff Writer Less than a year after the acquisition of Alvos Therapeutics Inc. gave Arrowhead Research Corp. a library of 42,000 individual targeting sequences, the company has attracted a second research collaboration and license deal. Shire plc will use Arrowhead's human-derived homing peptide platform to develop and commercialize targeted peptide-drug conjugates (PDCs) using Shire's therapeutic payloads. In April, Arrowhead bought Alvos, of Waltham, Mass., in an all-stock deal
By Staff Reports The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in a "pay-for-delay" case involving Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc., in which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claims Watson and other generic drugmakers violated the law by agreeing to accept $42 million for holding off the marketing of generic testosterone gels. The FTC named Watson, Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc., Par Pharmaceutical Co. and Paddock Laboratories Inc. in a case that centers on Solvay's Androgel. (See BioWorld Today
By Sharon Kingman Staff Writer LONDON – Scientists have tracked the cause of a rare genetic condition that causes muscular weakness to a mutation affecting neurotransmission. The mutation is in the gene that encodes a molecule that transports choline into the neuron at the neuromuscular junction. Choline is a vital raw material required for the synthesis of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Although the condition studied, which is known as distal hereditary motor neuropathy Type VII (dHMN-VII
By Cormac Sheridan Staff Writer Europe's cash-starved biotechnology sector has another €240 million (US$312 million) to aim for, following Sofinnova Partners' successful closing of its seventh fund. For the first time, Paris-based Sofinnova is focusing exclusively on life sciences, having previously invested more than a quarter of its capital, including its €260 million sixth fund, in IT. "Life sciences is what has provided most of the returns at Sofinnova over a long period of time, across all
By Peter Winter Editor The biopharmaceutical industry is certainly on a productive roll as measured by its output of new medicines. The number of new drug approvals appears to be steadily increasing year-over-year. The rate at which the FDA has approved new molecular entities (NMEs) – including those filed under new drug applications (NDAs) and therapeutic biologics filed under original biologic license applications (BLAs) is already ahead of last year's total of 30 (24 NMEs, and six biologics
By Marie Powers Staff Writer The third spin-off from the entrepreneurship partnership program (EPP) launched in April by Merck KGaA biopharmaceutical division Merck Serono SA in conjunction with the closure of its Geneva headquarters, Asceneuron SA is focusing on one of biotech's most elusive targets: Alzheimer's disease (AD). Launched in October with €5 million (US$6.4 million) in seed funding from Merck Serono, Asceneuron is seeking to advance Merck Serono's preclinical programs in AD and tau
By Anette Breindl Science Editor Arguments have gone back and forth for some time now on whether cancer cells use a developmental program called the epithelial to mesenchymal transition, or EMT, to metastasize. Two new studies suggested they do – but only for the first half of the metastatic process, pulling up stakes and leaving the primary tumor. In order to actually establish metastases at distant sites, though, it is critical that those wandering cells turn the EMT program back off. In
By Randy Osborne Staff Writer Two strikes – and investor suspense – led up to a home run for Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc., which tweaked the designs of previous, failed Phase III trials and thereby met all endpoints in the latest one with pimavanserin in Parkinson's disease psychosis (PDP). "We did that in a smart way, so that we minimized placebo response and succeeded in suppressing variability," said Acadia CEO Uli Hacksell. "I think we have found a formula for success." The nondopaminergic
By Anette Breindl Science Editor Researchers have created a mouse with a reporter gene that appears to light up at the earliest stages of tumor development, regardless of the tissue type in which the tumor is developing. "It really does seem to work in every malignancy we've tested," Norman Sharpless told BioWorld Today, which makes the mouse in question a broadly useful tool to study the earliest stages of tumor development. The reporter is a luciferase gene that reports expression of the tumor