HONG KONG – Aprinoia Therapeutics Inc. is poised to start phase III clinical trials for its positron emission tomography (PET) imaging tracer 18F-APN-1607 in China, after receiving the green light from the National Medical Products Administration.
LONDON – Former CEO of Novartis AG Joe Jimenez is emerging back into the limelight as founder and managing director of Aditum Bio, a new $135 million venture capital fund set up to create five to six companies to take forward early stage compounds in-licensed from pharma.
PERTH, Australia – Clinuvel Pharmaceuticals Ltd. announced two new pharmaceutical indications for its lead product, Scenesse (afamelanotide). “The company has until now focused on one drug and has slowly gathered evidence and is now in a position to add other products to its pipeline,” Clinuvel CEO Philippe Wolgen told BioWorld.
Longboard Pharmaceuticals Inc. is spinning out from Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc., courtesy of a $56 million financing to help develop CNS-targeted therapies. On the table to be developed are compounds discovered using Arena’s G protein-coupled receptor research engine.
PERTH, Australia – Neuroscience technology company Cogstate Ltd. and Japanese pharmaceutical company Eisai Co. Ltd. signed a deal under which Eisai will have global development rights and exclusive commercialization rights of all cognitive function tests developed by Cogstate, including the Cogstate Brief Battery (CBB) for use in health care and other markets.
Shares of Cambridge, Mass.-based Scholar Rock Holding Corp. closed Oct. 27 at $30.02, up $16.30, or 119%, on positive six-month interim analysis results from the Topaz phase II trial with inhibitor of myostatin activator SRK-015 in type 2 and type 3 spinal muscular atrophy, and CEO Tony Kingsley pointed to “a rich cascade of data ahead of us.”
Two complete response letters for group members dispatched this month by the FDA was enough to contribute to a flat performance in October for the BioWorld Neurological Diseases index. Overall, the price-weighted index has remained underwater for most of the year with its value down about 5% during this period.
The fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) inhibitor space may seem, in the words of one analyst, “historically a graveyard,” but that didn’t keep Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc from buying Springworks Therapeutics Inc.’s program with a plan to take aim first at post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and associated symptoms.
With a Nov. 6 FDA adcom meeting on Biogen Inc.'s Alzheimer's candidate, aducanumab, creeping ever closer, the candidate's prospects stole the show in its third-quarter earnings report, even outshining attention to the cloud of generics raining on the company's years-long Tecfidera (dimethyl fumarate) parade. FDA acceptance for aducanumab's BLA lines the candidate up for a priority review and regulatory action by March 7, the company said. Furthermore, global progress remains underway, with an EU marketing application now made and one in Japan on deck.
PERTH, Australia – Sydney-based Actinogen Medical Ltd. will advance its lead compound, Xanamem, into two proof-of-concept phase II studies in Alzheimer’s disease and fragile X syndrome.