TOKYO – Japan's declining sales of long-listed drugs will force some pharmaceutical companies to shift their business models. Sales of most of these drugs fell short of forecasts between April and September, and led drug companies to cut their full-year forecasts for sales by more than 70 percent.
BEIJING – At the recent China Trials 7 event, the discussion was far ranging about how to make China a second home market for foreign drug companies and a better home market for local ones, but it is clear that many challenges need to be resolved in the clinical trial space before that can become a reality.
SHANGHAI – For a small start-up with only two and a half years under its belt, Suzhou Connect Biopharmaceuticals Inc., of Suzhou, Jiangsu, is understandably pleased to be kicking off its phase I trials for CBP-307 in Australia. Developed in-house, CBP-307 is a second-generation S1P1 modulator with the potential to treat autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis (MS), psoriasis or inflammatory bowel disease.
BEIJING – The cream of the crop in China's biotech world are quietly but surely developing strategies to bring their innovative assets to global markets. That was the message shared by Rick Sax, global head and senior vice president of clinical trials and reporting at Quintiles Transnational Corp., during the recent China Trials 7 conference, where he discussed what he terms a new China biopharma paradigm.
SHANGHAI – Ascletis Inc., a Chinese biotech with deep pockets, has obtained exclusive China rights for PPI-668, an NS5A inhibitor of the hepatitis C virus (HCV), from the San Francisco-based Presidio Pharmaceuticals Inc. That candidate, in combination with a prior one licensed from Roche AG, is expected to provide Chinese patients with an interferon-free cure for HCV.
NEW DELHI – India has eased the process of patent applications for pharmaceutical companies by dropping a mandatory clause put in place to check whether claims of new discoveries attached to patent applications are valid – meaning that they are actually new discoveries.
LONDON – The first clinical trials of experimental Ebola treatments in patients in Africa are poised to get under way at three treatment centers run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Guinea and Liberia.
Cellmid Ltd., of Sydney, Australia, said it signed an agreement with Zoetis Inc., of Madison, N.J., for the evaluation and option to license one of Cellmid's anti-midkine antibodies (MK antibody) for therapeutic use in companion animals. Their MK antibodies previously have been shown to be effective in animal models of a number of diseases. The terms of the agreement include up-front and exclusivity payments until the option to license potentially exercised. Additional financial details were not disclosed.
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