Symphogen A/S, of Copenhagen, Denmark, has raised what it said is the largest financing ever for a private European biotech company with a $131 million preferred stock placement.

If imitation is the highest form of praise, it appears that a growing list of companies think very highly of rituximab – and its multi-billion-dollar world market.

Santaris Pharma A/S and Pfizer Inc. agreed to a deal potentially worth more than $614 million to extend their collaboration to develop and commercialize as many as 10 new RNA targets using Santaris' locked nucleic acid platform (LNA).

If you understand the meaning of the expression "better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick," you can appreciate why investors are backing fledgling PanOptica Inc. with $30 million in Series A financing.

Genocea Biosciences Inc. has closed a $35 million Series B round of venture financing that the company expects will take it deep into clinical development of its lead program, a therapeutic vaccine for herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) infections, and bring candidates for chlamydia, pneumonia, malaria and herpes prophylaxis in its pipeline up to the clinical stage.

Shares in Atlanta-based Alimera Sciences Inc. and partner pSivida Corp., of Watertown, Mass., sank Monday in the aftermath of an FDA complete response letter asking for analyses of the safety and efficacy data through month 36 of a Phase III trial of Iluvien (fluocinolone acetonide intravitreal insert), a sustained drug delivery system for treatment of diabetic macular edema (DME).

Scott Johnson is a man in a hurry to discover a cure for multiple sclerosis (MS). If he succeeds, the founder and president of the Myelin Repair Foundation, of Saratoga, Calif., will have conquered the disease he's lived with since 1976. And in the process, he also will have demonstrated the speed and effectiveness of his new model for producing treatments.

Believing that it's a good time to access capital and make a move in the cell therapy space, Pathfinder LLC, of Cambridge, Mass., will become a public company via a reverse merger with biomaterials company SyntheMed Inc., of Iselin, N.J.

Biogen Idec Inc. followed through on its November promise to leverage its neurology R&D expertise with the acquisition this week of three preclinical immunotherapy programs focused on Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. acquired exclusive, worldwide rights to manufacture, develop and commercialize festinavir, a once-a-day, orally available nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI) for HIV, from Oncolys BioPharma Inc., of Tokyo, a privately held company.