Pinnacle Medicines Inc. secured $89 million in a series B financing, bringing the total raised by the company to $134 million. The round was co-led by LAV and Foresite Capital.
The K-health MIRAE Initiative, also known as Korean ARPA-H, announced plans to allocate about ₩162 billion (US$110 million) in nine new projects over the next five years, with a focus on strengthening national health security.
In what it says could be the largest disclosed patent settlement in the pharmaceutical industry, Roivant Sciences Ltd. has reached a potential $2.25 billion settlement with Moderna Inc. over the use of its lipid nanoparticle delivery technology in the Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine.
In a boon for licensee Bristol Myers Squibb Co., Systimmune Inc.’s next-generation cancer drug, izalontamab brengitecan (iza-bren), hit both progression-free survival and overall survival endpoints in a phase III trial of Chinese patients with advanced triple-negative breast cancer.
Generate Biomedicines Inc. proved that enthusiasm hasn’t waned for TSLP as a target by pricing an IPO selling 25 million shares at $16 each for proceeds of $400 million. Generate’s lead compound is phase III-stage TSLP-targeting antibody GB-0895 and the company’s assigned Nasdaq ticker is GENB. The offering is expected to close on March 2.
United Therapeutics Corp.’s founder, chairman and CEO Martine Rothblatt disclosed during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call Feb. 25 the “unsheathing of a category killer product” known as Tresmi, a drug-device formulation of treprostinil delivered via a soft mist inhaler.
GSK plc is paying $950 million cash to acquire 100% of 35Pharma Inc.’s equity and pipeline, including phase II-ready candidate HS-235 for pulmonary hypertension. The acquisition agreement comes a day after GSK added two small interfering RNA assets from Nanjing, China-based Frontier Biotechnologies Inc. through a license deal reaching up to $1 billion.
Upstream Bio Inc.’s favorable top-line results from the phase II Valiant trial testing verekitug in adults with severe asthma were not enough to charm Wall Street, and shares of the firm (NASDAQ:UPB) closed Feb. 11 at $14.69, down $13.12, or 47%.
Australian respiratory imaging technology company 4dmedical Ltd. raised AU$150 million (US$105 million) in an institutional placement to accelerate U.S. adoption of its CT:VQ lung imaging software to bolster the company’s lead in software-based lung imaging.
The prevalence of asthma differs between men and women, and furthermore, the difference changes over the lifespan. “Asthma is more common in boys than girls, but more common in women than men,” Clare Lloyd told BioWorld. Females are particularly susceptible to asthma during developmental periods of hormonal changes, also known as puberty, pregnancy and menopause.