Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc. has filed a request for regulatory clearance in New Zealand to initiate a phase I/IIa trial of ARO-MAPT, the company’s investigational RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutic being developed as a potential treatment for tauopathies, including Alzheimer’s disease.
Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc. has announced a global licensing and collaboration agreement with Novartis AG for ARO-SNCA, Arrowhead’s preclinical stage siRNA therapy for the treatment of synucleinopathies such as Parkinson’s disease, and for additional targets.
Acute pancreatitis took center stage as Wall Street took heed of phase III data from Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc. with olezarsen for severe hypertriglyceridemia (sHTG), while another player in the space, Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc., signed a sizeable deal in a separate therapeutic area with Novartis AG.
The BioWorld Drug Developers Index underperformed both the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index (NBI) and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) throughout February and March. However, it showed some recovery by the end of April, finishing the month down 4.67%, slightly worse than the DJIA’s 4.41% decline. The NBI ended April slightly up from both, with a year-to-date drop of 1.16%.
In a deal that could reach nearly $2 billion, Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd. has licensed a small molecule for treating cardiovascular disease to Merck & Co. Inc., dropping the China-based company into a space with lots of competitors in varying stages of development.
Previous research has demonstrated that activin receptor-like kinase 7 (ALK7) signaling suppresses lipolysis, resulting in increased adipocyte size and lipid content. Additionally, predicted loss of function variants in the ALK7 gene (ACVR1C) have been associated with reduced waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) adjusted for body mass index, protection from type 2 diabetes, as well as reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.
The BioWorld Biopharmaceutical Index (BBI) closed November with a modest 3.58% gain for the year, a sharp decline from its 16.92% rise in September and peak of 25.19% in August. The BBI has now fallen behind the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index, which posted a 6.27% year-to-date gain, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, up 19.16% at the end of the month.
Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. has signed a licensing and collaboration agreement with Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc. to obtain exclusive global rights to multiple clinical, preclinical and discovery-stage programs for rare genetic diseases of the muscle, central nervous system (CNS) and the lungs. The deal includes ARO-DUX4, ARO-DM1, ARO-MMP7 and ARO-ATXN2.
In the largest collaboration of 2024, Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. and Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals Inc. entered a sprawling global licensing deal that includes a swath of clinical and preclinical candidates targeting rare genetic diseases. Under the terms, Sarepta gains access to existing and potential future compounds derived from the RNAi platform developed by Arrowhead, with the latter eligible for payments potentially exceeding $11 billion.
