Apellis Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s $47.1 million in series D money will let the company reach "some inflection points in rare diseases and geographic atrophy [GA] in the next year or so," general counsel David Watson told BioWorld Today, though he declined to provide specifics. "We're going to leave that open for now," he said.

Incyte Corp.'s decision to back away from experiments in solid tumors with Janus kinase 1 (JAK1)/JAK2 inhibitor Jakafi (ruxolitinib) was not exactly a surprise but undercuts future profit potential for the drug – still selling well in its approved indications – and turned investor attention to the indoleamine 2, 3-dioxygenase (IDO) program with epacadostat, bound for phase III trials in melanoma this year.

Generics specialist Mylan N.V. said it would buy Sweden's Meda AB for about SEK83.6 billion (US$9.9 billion), including debt, in a combination of cash and stock.

Alkermes plc's phase III program with the antipsychotic ALKS 3831 for schizophrenia is designed to find out whether the tablet – which combines olanzapine with the firm's opioid antagonist samidorphan – can get around the weight-gain and metabolic problems that come with olanzapine by itself.

CEO Jonathan Peacock told BioWorld Today that the phase III program with drug-device combo Inopulse in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) will start "hopefully in the next few weeks," now that Bellerophon Therapeutics Inc. has in hand a positive analysis of final phase II data with the inhaled nitric-oxide product.

Less than a month after Shire plc finished its $5.9 billion buyout of kallikrein player Dyax Corp., Biocryst Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s unhappy phase IIb data with an oral, liquid-filled soft-gel candidate avoralstat in the same class for hereditary angioedema (HAE) hobbled the firm on Wall Street and turned investor hopes toward the same drug's solid form, which has shown better, dose-dependent exposure for longer in preclinical models, along with a next-generation prospect.

Looking ahead to the pivotal trial in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) with IMMU-132, slated to begin this summer, Immunomedics Inc. stands as "the only game in town at the moment this far along that has an antibody that targets this [TROP-2] receptor," Chau Cheng, director of investor relations, told BioWorld Today.

With a possible fix for compliance and side-effect issues in Alzheimer's disease (AD), Corium International Inc. drew attention from Wall Street by way of positive top-line phase I data that disclosed pharmacokinetics (PK) of its Corplex once-weekly transdermal patch delivering the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor donepezil, sold as oral, daily Aricept by Pfizer Inc.

The misidentified cell line on which Heat Biologics Inc. based its cancer therapy HS-410 (vesigenurtacel-L) represents "a labeling problem that occurred very early in development," chief scientific officer Taylor Schreiber told BioWorld Today, and the paperwork matter should be resolved quickly with the FDA.