The increased use of GLP-1 receptor agonists has led on to an increase in reports of acute pancreatitis in people taking these weight loss drugs in the U.K. That has prompted the launch of a pharmacogenomics project to investigate if there are any genetic links underlying the occurrence of this adverse event.
One year after the FDA’s nod, the EMA is following on and recommending conditional approval of Madrigal Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s Rezdiffra (resmetirom) as the first drug in Europe for treating noncirrhotic metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.
To no great surprise, the U.K.’s health technology assessment body has found that the benefits of the first two approved Alzheimer’s disease drugs are too small to justify the costs. Neither Kisunla (donanemab, Eli Lilly and Co. Inc.) or Leqembi (lecanemab, Eisai Co. Ltd.), “demonstrate sufficient benefit to justify their high cost, including the cost of administering them,” the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) concluded after an extended appraisal of the two amyloid neutralizing antibodies.
Draig Therapeutics Ltd. launched with a $140 million series A and an AMPA receptor modulator program that has completed phase I and will start a phase II trial in major depressive disorder later in 2025. The series A also will enable the company to advance two small-molecule GABA receptor modulators that have the potential to treat a range of neuropsychiatric disorders, into the clinic in 2026.
The Alphafold machine learning system for predicting a protein’s structure from its amino acid sequence has been adapted to make it possible to design de novo proteins that fold in a particular way and bind to prespecified target proteins. The sister system, called Alphadesign, works by generating random strings of amino acids, using Alphafold to predict their structure, and then iteratively optimizing the design.
CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd. announced June 13 that it struck a potential $5.33 billion deal with Astrazeneca plc to develop novel preclinical small-molecule candidates using CSPC’s AI-driven drug development platform.
The U.K. government has announced the latest measures to speed up and expand clinical trials, launching Be Part of Research, a central national register where people can search and sign up to take part in studies.
As it prepares to present the latest data from the phase I/II clinical trial of EO-2463, Enterome SA has secured $19 million to expand and complete the study, and to scope phase III development of the microbiome-derived off-the-shelf immunotherapy in the treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Newco Elkedonia SAS has raised €11 million (US$12.7 million) in a seed round, which will fund it to take a potentially first-in-class ELK-1 inhibitor into the clinic in the treatment of refractory depression. ELK-1 plays a pivotal role in neuroplasticity and in reward circuits in the brain, which when disrupted can lead to depression, addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Three years after litigation started over technology used in an mRNA vaccine for COVID-19, Biontech SE is acquiring its adversary, Curevac NV, through an all-stock transaction valued at about $1.25 billion. The amount is lower than the $3 billion in backpay Curevac could win through the lawsuit if a low mid-single-digit royalty were awarded, Evercore ISI analysts Jon Miller and Umer Raffat said. But the legal uncertainty has weighed heavily on the company, which shed 30% of its workforce last July and sold off rights to two of its infectious disease vaccines.
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