Fluorine-focused Scifluor Life Sciences Inc. pulled down $30 million that should "allow us to get into what we suspect will be four phase I trials" with a pair of compounds – including eye drops for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) – and provides "at least a two-year runway," CEO Omar Amirana told BioWorld Today.
Having banked $38 million in a series A round late last year, cancer immunotherapy firm Potenza Therapeutics Inc. is "in good shape in terms of financing," thanks also to an undisclosed amount of new money from a deal with Astellas Pharma Inc., CEO Daniel Hicklin told BioWorld Today.
Dimension Therapeutics Inc.'s $65 million series B financing lets the firm push its adeno-associated virus (AAV) platform and the growing pipeline of gene therapy programs.
The snail-horn sensitivity of investors in chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) immunotherapy made itself known as data continue to spill from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting in Philadelphia, with early results offered by Novartis AG sending ripples across the space.
An intriguing "excellent outcome" in certain patients plus Multistem's clean safety profile may let Athersys Inc. and Japan partner Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. refine the targeted patient population for better results in future trials, but for now the cell therapy has failed overall in top-line data from an exploratory phase II study in ischemic stroke.
On the heels of last summer's phase IIb failure of TC-5214 in overactive bladder – a disappointment that pushed shares to a then-52-week low of $2.76 – and a string of other duds with neuronal nicotinic receptors (NNRs), Targacept Inc. said top-line results from a phase I/II exploratory study of TC-6499 as a treatment for diabetic gastroparesis also missed its primary endpoint and the program will be discontinued.
It might not add much to Pfizer Inc.'s bottom line, since oral Ibrance (palbociclib) is approved already as a first-line therapy, but the first randomized phase III data with the compound made a strong showing in the trial called PALOMA-3, stopped early because of solid efficacy.
The Medicines Co.'s intravenous antiplatelet agent cangrelor is taking center stage Wednesday because of an FDA advisory panel, but backers of the Parsippany, N.J.-based firm increasingly are looking at the rest of the pipeline, including the reformulated version of the intravenous Minocin (minocycline), RPX-602, due for a decision on approval from U.S. regulators this month.
As an advisory panel for the FDA prepared to take up the matter Tuesday of safety issues with Astrazeneca plc’s marketed dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitor for diabetes, Viking Therapeutics Inc. lowered the target for its IPO in a move that could help the firm advance the licensing deal with Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. – also with a strong diabetes component, though otherwise unrelated and involving drugs with a different mechanism of action).
The prospect of establishing a specially focused orphan drug megafund, through which investors put money down and collect on the spoils as drugs and intellectual property rights are sold to venture capitalists or pharma firms, is one due to be explored during a panel talk at the Allicense 2015 conference by Andrew Lo, Sloan professor of finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
