Dutch start-up AIMM Therapeutics NV has inked a deal with a pharma partner, providing the means to ramp up development of its novel antibody platforms, and has attracted a leading immunologist and former head of the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research, Jan de Vries, as CEO to spearhead that effort.

LONDON – A compound isolated from a traditional Chinese medicine has specific anti-inflammatory properties and could offer a way to develop a new class of anti-inflammatory drugs.

LONDON – There may not be that much competition, but AmpliPhi Biosciences Corp. now claims to be the world's leading bacteriophage company, following completion of its merger with Sydney, Australia-based Special Phage Services Pty.

Zealand Pharmaceuticals A/S is set to join what is still an all too select club of European biotechnology firms with a product approval under their belts.

LONDON – Complix NV is in the thick of a €15 million to €20 million (US$19 million to $25 million) Series B fundraising, as it prepares to move the first of its intracellular-targeting Alphabodies into Phase I trials in 2013.

LONDON – A new low-cost technique will allow scientists to easily monitor all the genes and proteins being switched on and off in different cells under different circumstances.

Without much fanfare, Bone Therapeutics SA has begun a pivotal double-blinded Phase III trial of a cell therapy for osteonecrosis, a debilitating bone disorder affecting young adults.

LONDON – Following the award of the Nobel Prize for Medicine to Shinya Yamanaka for his discovery of how to reprogram adult skin cells back to pluripotent stem cells, large-scale initiatives to use the technique for the creation of specialized cell banks are taking shape in Europe.

Vaccibody AS received €2 million (US$2.5 million) to have a crack at a problem that has eluded firms with far greater resources: developing an effective therapeutic vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV) infection.

Poised to wade into a crowded field of drugs for hereditary angioedema (HAE), Santarus Inc. and partner Pharming Group NV said last week the pivotal Phase III study with the C1 esterase inhibitor Ruconest for acute HAE attacks met the primary endpoint of time to beginning of symptom relief.