LONDON – Researchers at the Jenner Institute in Oxford have given an inside view of how they are accelerating clinical development of a COVID-19 vaccine and at the same time putting in place commercial manufacturing for when phase III efficacy data are available, expected in August or September.
Following a priority review, partners Astrazeneca plc and Merck & Co. Inc. have gained a green light from the FDA for U.S. marketing of the oral MEK1/2 inhibitor Koselugo (selumetinib), the first FDA-approved treatment for the rare genetic disorder neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1).
DUBLIN – Silence Therapeutics plc entered a wide-ranging siRNA-based drug discovery and development deal with Astrazeneca plc that has propelled it toward the front ranks of siRNA platform companies. It is banking an up-front payment of $60 million, another $20 million as an equity investment and up to $400 million in option fees and milestone payments per candidate drug, in an alliance that could entail up to five active programs within three years.
In a setback for Astrazeneca plc's plans to tackle previously untreated cases of advanced bladder cancer, neither its immune checkpoint inhibitor, Imfinzi (durvalumab), nor a pairing of it with the investigational drug tremelimumab beat standard-of-care (SOC) chemotherapy in improving overall survival (OS) during a phase III trial evaluating the treatments as first-line (1L) care for patients with advanced disease.
BEIJING – There was encouraging news when vaccine developer Moderna Inc. announced Feb. 24 that it has shipped the first vials of its mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 for a phase I trial in the U.S. The vaccine was created just 42 days after the genetic sequence of the COVID-19 virus was released.
PERTH, Australia – Australian medication adherence technology firm Adherium Ltd. is relaunching itself after a management reshuffle and a successful capital raise of AU$5.4 million (US$3.5 million) to deploy a new commercial strategy.
The pending Abbvie Inc. merger with Allergan plc, expected to close in the first quarter, brought good tidings to another “A” company on Monday, allowing Astrazeneca plc to regain global rights to its late-stage Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis (UC) drug, brazikumab.
The pending Abbvie Inc. merger with Allergan plc, expected to close in the first quarter, brought good tidings to another “A” company on Monday, allowing Astrazeneca plc to regain global rights to its late-stage Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis (UC) drug, brazikumab, an anti-IL-23 therapy that was out-licensed to Allergan in a $1.27 billion deal in 2016.
BEIJING – CF Pharmtech Inc., of Suzhou, China, closed a ¥630 million (US$90 million) series E financing round to bring its inhaled respiratory drugs to global markets and replace imports with homegrown products faster.
A mitochondrial glutamine transporter variant is a key regulator of glutamine metabolism and metabolic reprogramming in cancer cells, and targeting such transporters could be a new strategy for controlling tumor growth.
