SAN FRANCISCO — As investors in biopharma, medtech and affiliated industries descend on San Francisco for the start of the 34th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference (JPM), invited guests and throngs of hangers-on could be forgiven for glancing nervously over their shoulders at the global capital markets.
As investors in biopharma, medtech and affiliated industries descend on San Francisco for the start of the 34th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference (JPM), invited guests and throngs of hangers-on could be forgiven for glancing nervously over their shoulders at the global capital markets. In the wake of geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainties – currency and stock roiling in China, oil-fueled power brokering in the Middle East, election year politicking in the U.S. and saber-rattling in North Korea – the first trading days of 2016 took investors on a wild ride, and they might need to hold onto their hats for the foreseeable future.
Petra Pharma Corp. became the first life science start-up for the 1-year-old New York arm of Accelerator Corp., initially established more than a dozen years ago in Seattle.
Scholar Rock Inc., the 2-year-old company pursuing drugs that target supracellular activation of growth factors, jump-started its New Year with a $36 million series B financing.
Two years after entering a crowded field seeking to control gene expression in treating cancer, Effector Therapeutics Inc. showed that its approach – the development of small-molecule translation regulators – has staying power by landing a $40 million series B to advance its first two programs into the clinic.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMS) exited development of HIV therapies in a big way, selling its entire R&D pipeline of HIV assets to erstwhile competitor Viiv Healthcare Ltd., the joint venture established in 2009 by Glaxosmithkline plc and Pfizer Inc. to focus on HIV medicines.
Overactive bladder (OAB) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) aren't the sexiest indications in the drug development universe, but tens of millions of patients remain untreated or undertreated for the common, uncomfortable conditions. With that large unmet need in mind, Velicept Therapeutics Inc. recently closed the first tranche of a $21 million series B financing to advance an asset that could potentially address both.
Astrazeneca plc expanded its reach in the global respiratory market with a $575 million deal to acquire the core respiratory assets of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. The transaction included the expansion of rights to roflumilast, marketed as Daliresp in the U.S. and Daxas elsewhere, a once-daily oral PDE4 inhibitor approved to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Tiny Kitov Pharmaceuticals Holdings Ltd. made a big splash in the drug development world with news that its lead candidate, KIT-302, met the primary efficacy endpoint of reducing blood pressure as a combo drug that also treats osteoarthritic (OA) pain during a double-blind, placebo-controlled phase III trial that received a special protocol assessment from the FDA.
Atara Biotherapeutics Inc. is suspending development of PINTA 745 after the peptide-antibody combination missed its primary endpoint, defined as percent change from baseline in lean body mass as measured by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry at week 12, in a phase II proof-of-concept study.
