Five Prime Therapeutics Inc. is getting $20 million up front, selling a premium-priced equity stake, and “learning from the masters, as it were,” in its three-year cancer immunotherapy deal with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMS), an agreement centered on two undisclosed pathways that could generate a couple of targets each, said Five Prime CEO Lewis Williams.
Already trading weakly as a public entity thanks to its reverse merger in the fall of last year, Ignyta Inc. priced an initial public offering (IPO) of about 5.2 million shares at $9.15 each, for gross proceeds of about $48 million and a net haul of about $44.5 million.
Anaptysbio Inc.’s SHM-XEL antibody-making platform that replicates somatic hypermutation in vitro drew yet another partner, this time Tesaro Inc., which agreed to pay $17 million up front for rights to three cancer antibody programs and could fork over as much as $108 million per target as Tesaro makes progress beyond the preclinical stage with each.
While Geron Corp. awaits formal notification by letter from the FDA regarding the full clinical hold placed on imetelstat, shares crashed and investors had few answers to their questions about the surprising move.
The higher-dose glitch in otherwise strong phase II results with its galectin-3-targeting chronic kidney disease (CKD) therapy did little to hold back shares of La Jolla Pharmaceutical Co. (NASDAQ:LJPC), which closed Tuesday at $17.96, up $7.06, or 64.8 percent.
Last Thursday’s midday sell-off in the sector raised some eyebrows, but market watchers say the sudden moves were no cause for alarm, with ISI Group analyst Mark Schoenebaum pinning the seismic rumble on remarks made during a luncheon by Federal Reserve Bank president William Dudley.
Incyte Corp. could achieve label expansion with the already successful myelofibrosis (MF) drug Jakafi (ruxolitinib) by the end of this year, thanks to a phase III victory in the myeloproliferative neoplasm known as polycythemia vera (PV), which sometimes advances to MF.
As investors await data from phase III trials with ALKS 9070 (aripiprazole lauroxil) in schizophrenia, Alkermes plc is starting its pivotal program with once-daily, oral ALKS 5461 for major depressive disorder (MDD).
Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s bigger-than-expected public offering grossed about $182 million that will fund ongoing efforts to expand the indications for pimavanserin, due to become the subject of a new drug application (NDA) in Parkinson’s disease psychosis (PDP) before the year is done.
With a wholly owned drug for Parkinson’s disease (PD) at the phase III stage, Adamas Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Forest Laboratories Inc. – its partner for a combo Alzheimer’s disease (AD) therapy – submitted a new drug application (NDA) to the FDA for the once-daily capsule MDX-8704 to treat AD-related dementia.
