Tioma Therapeutics Inc. hauled in $86 million in its series A to support development of a pipeline of anti-CD47 antibodies to treat solid and hematologic cancers. The stunning size of the round was designed to enable the company, founded a decade ago in St. Louis, Mo., as Vasculox Inc., to open a corporate office in Brisbane, Calif., and achieve an ambitious clinical program by advancing multiple candidates through proof of concept, both as monotherapy and in combination regimens.
Versartis Inc. lassoed its first commercial partner, Teijin Pharma Ltd., to develop and market its long-acting recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) candidate, somavaratan (VRS-317), in Japan. The deal, which includes both pediatric and adult growth hormone deficiency (GHD) indications, called for Versartis to receive $40 million up front and up to $125 million in potential development, regulatory and sales milestones while retaining exclusive rights to the asset in the rest of the world.
Immunotherapy developer Tapimmune Inc., which began life back in 2000 as Genemax Corp., quietly inked a series of deals and kept its head down during the formative years of the immuno-oncology (I-O) field.
A decade after its launch by researchers affiliated with Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, privately held Athera Biotechnologies AB concluded the phase I program of its fully human monoclonal antibody, dubbed PC-mAb, and validated its safety and tolerability in patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD). The long road for the company included out-licensing of a second promising candidate to conserve capital and an option deal with Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH (BI) that was terminated several years later when the German pharma reprioritized its R&D strategy.
Versartis Inc. lassoed its first commercial partner, Teijin Pharma Ltd., to develop and market its long-acting recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) candidate, somavaratan (VRS-317), in Japan.
Pfenex Inc. learned late Friday that it was regaining rights to PF582, its biosimilar candidate to Lucentis (ranibizumab, Genentech Inc./Roche AG), according to Paul Wagner, the company's chief financial officer. The decision resulted from a re-prioritization of biosimilar assets by Pfizer Inc. following its acquisition of Pfenex partner, Hospira Inc.
The big data revolution is all around us, from politics to power plants, manufacturing to multimedia content, Wall street to Main Street. Small wonder that big data also is driving radical change in health care and therapeutic development.
One week after reporting outsized interim data on the phase I/II study of BMN 270 – potentially giving the company the inside track in hemophilia A – Biomarin Pharmaceutical Inc. cruised to record quarterly and first-half revenues of $300.1 million and $536.9 million, respectively.
Momenta Pharmaceuticals Inc. heeded the recommendation of an independent data safety monitoring board (DSMB) and stopped enrollment in the phase II trial of necuparanib (M402) in patients with advanced metastatic pancreatic cancer following the trial's planned interim futility analysis.
Therapies targeting the immune system – immuno-oncology candidates, in particular – are all the rage of late, but Bioniz Therapeutics Inc. is taking a different tack in its scientific approach to the immuno-inflammatory space.
