“The market stinks,” Brian Johnson, a partner and vice chair of Wilmerhale’s corporate practice group, told a U.S. SEC advisory committee Feb. 27, as he painted a gloomy picture of last year’s IPO landscape in the U.S. While the scene was a little brighter than in 2022, a few key indicators could be worrisome, especially the median offering size, which is predictive of the strength of the IPO market, Johnson said
The U.S. National Institutes of Health reported the launch of a network for clinical trials that will examine the utility of cancer screening tools, which will start with a pilot study of multi-cancer detection (MCD) tests.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has released a guidance to aid patent examiners in dealing with questions of obviousness in patent applications, but patent attorney Michael Borella told BioWorld that this new guidance could resurrect the law of unintended consequences. Borella, a partner in the Chicago office of McDonnell Boehnen Hulburt & Berghoff LLP, said the guidance might lead to more inappropriate rejections of patent claims for obviousness, and thus make the process of obtaining a clean patent more difficult, not less.
Continuing its aggressive buying spree, Bruker Corp. entered into a definitive share purchase agreement with Tecfin S.à r.l. to acquire molecular diagnostics (MDx) company Elitechgroup SAS for €870 million (US$943.5 million), excluding the Elitech clinical chemistry business. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2024 and will be funded with a mix of cash on hand and debt financing.
More than a year and a half after the U.S. FTC launched its investigation into how pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) practices and consolidation impact patients’ ability to access and afford their prescription drugs, the six biggest PBMs in the country have yet to fully comply with the agency’s June 2022 order to provide data and documents pertaining to certain business practices.
Allecra Therapeutics GmbH secured U.S. FDA approval for its beta-lactam/beta-lactamase inhibitor combination, Exblifep (cefepime/enmetazobactam), in complicated urinary tract infections, including pyelonephritis, in patients 18 years and older.
A China-based manufacturer of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) suspended producing API for the U.S. market following an FDA inspection that found “significant deviations” from good manufacturing practices at the facility.
To understand the focus of startup Insamo Inc., one need look no further than its name, which co-founder and CEO Timothy Craven described as “portmanteau of ‘internally satisfied molecules,’” highlighting its efforts to create orally administered and membrane-permeable cyclic peptides across a range of disease areas.
In the end, Minerva Neurosciences Inc. NDA submission wasn’t able to overcome the U.S. FDA’s concerns regarding data for dual 5-HT2A/sigma 2 antagonist roluperidone. The agency issued a complete response letter (CRL) for the application, which had been seeking approval as the first treatment specifically targeting negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has released the metrics for prosecutions under the False Claims Act (FCA) for fiscal year 2023, ringing up recoveries of nearly $2.7 billion, the 15th consecutive year in which recoveries exceeded $2 billion.