Gene and cell therapies will drive innovation for the next 10 years, Claus Zieler, the chief commercial officer at Astellas Pharma Inc., said in the newest episode of the BioWorld Insider podcast. Developers are on the cusp of breakthroughs because a gene can now be replaced “and that means we can potentially cure a disease rather than intervening in a disease.”
SK Bioscience Co. Ltd., of Seongnam-si, South Korea, said Oct. 8 that it will acquire a $3 million stake in Fina Biosolutions LLC to become the first and sole strategic investor of the Rockville, Md.-based vaccine specialist. For SK Bioscience, the investment is slated to boost its vaccine R&D capabilities, the company said, which currently includes manufacturing of pneumococcal and typhoid conjugate vaccines.
Gilead Sciences Inc. terminated a potential $785 million licensing deal with Yuhan Corp. inked in 2019 to develop metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) therapies.
With confidence dropping in doing business with China-affiliated life sciences companies due to the Biosecure Act, one of the companies explicitly named in the U.S. legislation is fighting back. Raising the possibility of a constitutional challenge to the bill, Rade Drmanac, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Complete Genomics Inc., wrote to congressional leaders to urge them to remove the California-based subsidiary of MGI from the bill.
Gene and cell therapies will drive innovation for the next 10 years, Claus Zieler, the chief commercial officer at Astellas Pharma Inc., said in the newest episode of the BioWorld Insider podcast. Developers are on the cusp of breakthroughs because a gene can now be replaced “and that means we can potentially cure a disease rather than intervening in a disease.”
South San Francisco-based Kezar Life Sciences Inc. voluntarily stopped its phase IIb Palizade trial of zetomipzomib in active lupus nephritis, following four fatal, or grade 5, serious adverse events of patients enrolled in the Philippines and Argentina.
Apimeds Pharmaceuticals US Inc., a subsidiary of Seoul, South Korea-based Inscobee Inc., is “counting down” to an official IPO on the New York Stock Exchange with its S-1 filing showing a targeted offering of $11.5 million.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reined in a district court that invalidated three claims in an Astellas Pharma Inc. patent protecting bladder drug Myrbetriq (mirabegron) based on a issue that was never argued.
Two leading glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists for obesity and type 2 diabetes – Novo Nordisk A/S’s semaglutide (Wegovy/Ozempic) and Eli Lilly and Co.’s tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound) – are advancing in China after taking the U.S. market by storm.
As Novo Nordisk A/S and Eli Lilly and Co. go head-to-head in the U.S. and Chinese glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RA) market for diabetes and obesity, Novo Nordisk is in innovator gear once more with leading studies of GLP-1s in Alzheimer’s disease.
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