Pathalys Pharma Inc., a privately held startup focused on developing new medicines chronic kidney disease, has emerged with an exclusive license from Tokyo-based EA Pharma Co. Ltd. to develop the small molecule calcimimetic upacicalcet for markets outside of Japan and Asia.
After two years of developing its platform, Vesalius Therapeutics Inc. now has $75 million in its pocket from Flagship Pioneering to understand and treat the diseases that account for 90% of the world’s illnesses. To resolve this massive amount of biological and industry complexity, Doug Cole, Vesalius’ chairman and co-founder and Flagship’s managing partner, noted the distinction between illness and disease. “Illness is what bothers you, it’s the experience of being sick and what the doctor might find when you’re examined,” Cole told BioWorld. “Disease is the mechanistic problem with the biology underlying the illness.”
A new study from researchers at Aevisbio Inc. and the National Institutes of Health on the effect of 3,6’-dithiopomalidomide on neuroinflammation adds new detail to what might one day become a significant new therapeutic strategy to treat Alzheimer's disease and other neurological disorders.
PERTH, Australia – Prota Therapeutics Ltd.’s lead candidate PRT-120 induced clinical remission of peanut allergy in 51% of children in a phase IIb clinical trial. There are currently no curative therapies to treat food allergies, Prota Therapeutics CEO Mimi Tang told BioWorld. Peanut allergy in children can be particularly problematic because the only treatment is avoidance.
U.K. biotech Complement Therapeutics Ltd has come out of stealth mode with €5 million ($5.7 million) in seed funding to tackle complement-related diseases, initially targeting the currently untreatable condition geographic atrophy due to dry age-related macular degeneration.
PERTH, Australia – Prota Therapeutics Ltd.’s lead candidate PRT-120 induced clinical remission of peanut allergy in 51% of children in a phase IIb clinical trial. There are currently no curative therapies to treat food allergies, Prota Therapeutics CEO Mimi Tang told BioWorld. Peanut allergy in children can be particularly problematic because the only treatment is avoidance.
LONDON – The team that opened up the market for anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) drugs in the treatment of eye diseases has formed a new company, Eyebio Ltd., with the aim of developing a new generation of ocular therapies. David Guyer and Anthony Adamis, founders of Eyetech Pharmaceuticals Inc., which brought Macugen (pegaptanib sodium) through to FDA approval in December 2004, set up Eyebio in August last year, with seed funding from SV Health Investors.
LONDON – Oxford University spinout Oxdx Ltd. has raised £2.6 million (US$3.6 million) in pre-seed funding to advance development of a technology for directly identifying infectious pathogens without the need to purify, culture or amplify samples first. The instant testing method uses a mixture of a single universal reagent, high resolution microscopy and machine learning, to identify specific species and strains of bacteria, viruses and other pathogens within minutes.
After a landmark clinical trial of the first POLQ inhibitor in cancer last year, a recently formed U.K. biotech is gearing up to bring a potential rival to the clinic in the coming months. Varsity Pharmaceuticals Ltd., of Cambridge, is planning to begin a phase I trial of novobiocin, a drug previously used as an antibiotic, which has also been found to inhibit the polymerase theta inhibitor (POLQ) pathway.
Before taking on the role of CEO at Bluesphere Bio Inc., David Apelian would have said the most exciting work he’d done in immuno-oncology had been at Globeimmune Inc., where he’d served as chief medical officer for more than a decade, working in the field of cancer immunotherapy “back when no one believed the immune system would be something we could leverage against cancer.”
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