Novartis AG is paying nearly $1 billion up front to buy privately held Anthos Therapeutics Inc. in a deal that eventually could top out around $3.1 billion. Novartis, coming back to where it started as it and Blackstone Life Sciences founded Anthos in 2019, is entering a crowded space.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Abbvie, Biodexa, Cosmo, Glenmark, Immix. Inmune, Keymed, Nektar, Tempest.
Biopharma happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Advancell, Arrowhead, Axsome, Eli Lilly, Medincell, Sarepta, Teva.
Researchers from the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Queensland, Australia and Emory University have shown that a potential new targeted therapy for childhood brain cancer was effective in infiltrating and killing tumor cells in mouse models.
Cognition Therapeutics Inc. evolved from the work of a neuroscientist and a chemist working in the San Francisco Bay area, seeking out targets to block the effects of Alzheimer’s disease. Since the company’s 2007 inception, it has received close to $200 million in U.S. NIH grant funding. Investors often tell CEO Lisa Ricciardi, who joined the company in 2020: “’That’s because you have a relationship with the FDA.’ Well, no. It’s because it’s competitive” and the company’s research has met the muster. “You have to apply two or three times. … It’s with rigor that these results are generated and that we’re able to get more funding.”
Amid a strengthening offensive against direct-to-consumer drug ads, two senators flagged a Super Bowl ad promoting compounded drugs as part of the company’s attack on the U.S. weight-loss industry that it said was built to keep Americans “sick and stuck.”
The Biosecure Act may have died with the 118th U.S. Congress, but efforts to stop U.S. government funding of R&D in China are alive and well. Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., introduced the Stop Funding our Adversaries Act in the House Feb. 7 to prohibit direct and indirect federal funding of research in China or entities owned by China.
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