The global pharmaceutical market will surpass $1.5 trillion by 2023, according to a new report from Iqvia Institute for Human Data Science. That works out to a compounded annual growth rate of 3 percent to 6 percent over the next five years, which is, unfortunately, a slowdown from the 6.3 percent growth the industry has experienced over the past five years.

Following up on its 2017 $23.5 million series A financing, Lyndra Therapeutics Inc. secured $55 million in a series B round to support the development of its long-acting therapies. All of the previous investors resubscribed, while Hopu Investments, Gilead Sciences Inc., Invus, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Orient Life joined their ranks. (See BioWorld Today, April 14, 2017.)

Trevena Inc. had a painful end to 2018 with the FDA's Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee voting 7-8 against recommending the proposed 0.1-mg and 0.35-mg doses of oliceridine, followed by a complete response letter (CRL) from the FDA the subsequent month.

About four years after starting up as part of the Y Combinator accelerator, Notable Labs Inc. has its first drug, ND-1000, ready to enter the clinic.

About four years after starting up as part of the Y Combinator accelerator, Notable Labs Inc. has its first drug, ND-1000, ready to enter the clinic.

Gene therapy has come a long way since the initial treatments of the early 1990s, but the insertion of genes can't help diseases with toxic gain-of-function mutations. Apic Bio Inc. is looking to overcome that limitation with its gene therapy platform, Thrive, which includes a second component expressing an miRNA to silence toxic gain-of-function mutations from a single vector.

Living up to its name, C4 Therapeutics Inc. exploded onto the scene before the J.P Morgan Healthcare conference in 2016 with a $73 million series A and a Roche Holding AG deal worth more than $750 million in hand. (See BioWorld Today, Jan. 7, 2016.)

There are many proteins in humans, bacteria and viruses that would make great targets to shut down a pathway to treat a disease or stop an infection, but, for a variety of reasons, designing drugs to target those proteins has been difficult.