A little more than two years after first licensing U.S. commercial rights to the Nucynta (tapentadol) pain drug franchise from Depomed Inc., specialty pharma Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc. is acquiring those rights from Depomed successor Assertio Therapeutics Inc. for $375 million in cash, less royalties paid to Assertio in 2020. The deal, which includes both extended-release (ER) and immediate-release formulations of the drug, is expected to close by Feb. 14. It will be financed with $325 million in committed debt financing.
Emeryville, Calif.-based Zogenix Inc.’s positive top-line data from the phase III study with Fintepla (fenfluramine oral solution) in Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) failed to charm Wall Street, which by day’s end trimmed the shares (NASDAQ:ZGNX) by $20.50, or 39%, putting the final price at $32.12.
An interim analysis of the phase III Recovery study of TNX-102 SL (cyclobenzaprine HCl sublingual tablets) for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) compelled Tonix Pharmaceuticals Holding Corp. to halt enrollment in the clinical trial.
DUBLIN – Shares in PTC Therapeutics Inc. dropped as much as 13% during premarket trading Feb. 6 on eagerly awaited 12-month data for its oral spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) drug risdiplam, which is licensed to Genentech. Although patients with type 2 or type 3 SMA demonstrated statistically significant improvements in motor function, the level of that improvement evidently disappointed some investors.
It was a trifecta to remember for Neurotrope Inc. on Wednesday as the company cast revealing light on a seemingly failed clinical program involving its lead candidate, had the NIH offer a grant to create a phase II trial to explore the program’s strengths, and then found institutional investors and individuals to pony up an $18 million registered direct offering for the company’s securities. It was a re-examination of data that resurrected Neurotrope’s hopes for its lead candidate months after a confirmatory phase II of bryostatin-1 failed to outperform a placebo in people with moderately severe to severe Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in the absence of Namenda (memantine, Allergan plc), an NMDA receptor antagonist.
What’s new inevitably includes an element of the old. Clene Nanomedicine Inc., which just completed enrollment and dosed the first patient in its phase II trial in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), literally contains an element of the old in its lead nanocatalytic therapy: gold.
Remember how Ras is a frequently mutated oncogene in solid tumors? Well, it turns out Ras plays a role in those memories, too. In the Jan. 13, 2020, online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Juniper, Fla., reported on the discovery that Ras signals through Raf and then Rho kinase to control whether memory is short or long-term.
With many on Wall Street transfixed by the three injectable calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) therapies cleared in the prophylactic migraine market, Satsuma Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s prospects with STS-101 may have gone overlooked, at least until lately.
Shares of Cambridge, Mass.-based Wave Life Sciences Ltd. (NASDAQ:WVE) lost 49.5% of their value, or $7.82, to close at $7.99 as investors learned of top-line data from the ongoing phase Ib/IIa Precision HD2 trial testing WVE-120102 in Huntington’s disease.
For biopharma, 2019 can be described as a terrific year – with a few asterisks. The financial markets were flourishing, with venture capital dollars, in particular, flowing to the sector, while dealmaking reached historic proportions. Meanwhile, scientific breakthroughs led the way as cell and gene therapies gained ground, the first signs of success emerged with new technologies like CRISPR and the long-awaited promise of genomics found its way to the front lines of health care.
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