PERTH, Australia – After raising A$10 million (US$7.36 million) in its initial public offering on the Australian Securities Exchange, BCAL Diagnostics Ltd. is racing to commercialize its noninvasive, blood-based in vitro diagnostic to detect breast cancer. The Breast Cancer Associated Lipids (BCAL) test is taken via a blood sample and analyzed for lipid biomarkers.
Another shoe dropped on Oncopeptides AB when the U.S. FDA issued an alert July 28 citing trial data showing an increased risk of death with the company’s only marketed drug, Pepaxto, used in combination with dexamethasone to treat multiple myeloma. The agency said it’s continuing to evaluate the Ocean trial results and may hold a public meeting to discuss the safety findings and explore the continued marketing of Pepaxto (melphalan flufenamide), which was granted accelerated approval in February as a fifth-line treatment for relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma.
Amgen Inc. will pay $900 million in cash to acquire privately held Teneobio Inc. In exchange for the cash, Amgen gets all of Teneobio’s outstanding shares, which could end up paying out quite a bit as contingent milestone payments to Teneobio’s equity holders could be worth up to $1.6 billion.
It's a good news, bad news scenario for exhausted T cells in chronic infections. Multiple groups of investigators reported in the July 26, 2021, online issue of NatureImmunology that even after a chronic hepatitis C virus infection was cured, T cells that had become dysfunctional during the infection retained epigenetic "scars" that prevented them from becoming fully functional memory T cells.