China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) approved the country’s first injectable teprotumumab biosimilar from Innovent Biologics Inc. under the brand name of Sycume (teprotumumab N-01) to treat thyroid eye disease on March 14. The NMPA on March 15 accepted Simcere Pharmaceutical Group Ltd.’s NDA of deunoxavir marboxil (ADC-189) tablets, a product originally developed by Jiaxing Andicon Biotech Co. Ltd. to treat influenza A and B.
Artificial intelligence (AI) drug developer Insilico Medicine raised $110 million in a series E round led by an Asian private equity fund, Value Partners Group, that will see Insilico advance its pipeline and AI platform developments.
Latest findings on Healios K.K.’s stem cell therapy to treat acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), coined Multistem (invimestrocel; HLCM-051), found the regenerative medicine effective in reducing the number of patient days on ventilator treatment, as well as mortality benefits.
Vivace Therapeutics Inc. closed a $35 million series D round led by RA Capital Management, an existing investor, and including other backers already on board: Canaan Partners and Cenova Capital. Proceeds will support the continued development of what the company describes as its first-in-class and best-in-class transcriptional enhanced associate domain autopalmitoylation (TEAD) inhibitor, VT-3989, with an initial focus on mesothelioma.
Leyden Laboratories BV added a fresh $70 million in financing to advance Panflu, its phase II-ready intranasal pan-influenza prophylactic medicine, while acquiring Cov Biotechnology Pte. Ltd. (Covbio) and its zoonotic virus-targeting portfolio to prepare for the next pandemic.
In another real-life episode of “sponsor beware,” the owners of a clinical research facility pleaded guilty March 10 in U.S. district court to fraud charges resulting from their conduct of two clinical trials for potential asthma drugs.
Three public health experts have voiced concerns that the uncertainties sparked by the Trump administration’s moves to reduce federal spending could limit the U.S. CDC’s ability to track and respond to infectious disease outbreaks and will undermine the public health support system in the U.S.
Insilico Medicine founder and CEO Alex Zhavoronkov told BioWorld that he tries to spend as much time as possible in China, because that's where the artificial intelligence (AI) drug development company conducts synthesis and tests for early stage discovery. “And nowadays, not a day goes by without somebody launching an AI drug discovery company,” he said, noting that Chinese AI company Deepseek could be a huge disrupter.
A new multi-omics approach to unpicking how noncoding gene variants influence the development of common chronic diseases has identified tens of thousands of instances where variants have an impact on gene expression levels and gene splicing, the post-transcriptional modification that allows one gene to code for multiple proteins.
As U.S. regulatory uncertainty swirls around the vaccine space and health care in general, Vaxcyte Inc. stands poised for a readout of phase II infant data by the end of this quarter with VAX-24, the 24-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV). The San Carlos, Calif.-based firm will offer top-line safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity data, to be followed by top-line data with the booster dose by the end of this year.