For children and adults with peanut allergies, the only therapeutic option comes from post-exposure treatment with epinephrine, such as Epipen (Mylan NV) or Auvi-q (Kaleo Inc.), to dampen the anaphylactic reaction. Even then, 100 to 150 people die from food allergies each year.

Life sciences companies are increasingly becoming targets of securities fraud lawsuits. After being flat from 2014 to 2015 at 39 cases filed in each year, the number of class action fraud lawsuits against life sciences companies increased more than 70 percent in 2016 to 67 cases, according to a new report from law firm Dechert LLP.

In its annual Drug Trend Report, pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts Holding Co. reported that the net price Express Scripts' clients paid for drugs increased 2.5 percent in 2016 compared to the year prior, 27 percent smaller increase than in 2015.

Earlier this month, Evotec AG and MaRS Innovation announced the launch of Fibrocor Therapeutics LP. The startup joins the growing number of companies working on drugs to fight fibrosis.

It's been a long road for Generx (Ad5FGF-4), a gene therapy designed to express fibroblast growth factor-4 (FGF-4) to increase vascularization in the heart.

"Thank goodness 2016 is over," the Cowen and Co. biotechnology analyst team wrote in its monthly biotech thermometer report to clients.

Venture capital investors gave it the old college try, but apparently they spent more time watching bowl games than investing in U.S. private biopharmaceutical companies in the fourth quarter.

Given the side effects and potential addiction issues with opioid drugs, pain-drug specialist Purdue Pharma L.P. is exploring options for other mechanisms of actions. Last week the company announced a deal with Anabios Corp. to accelerate Purdue's Nav1.7 sodium ion channel preclinical drug candidates.

The idea of synthetic biology – using computers, rather than trial and error, to rationally design drugs – has been around for years. But Woburn, Mass.-based Abpro is taking it to the next level with rationally designed antibodies using its Diversimmune platform. Labor intensive steps that used to take two to three years can now be done using bioinformatics that reduce the design time down to less than two months.

"Treat first, ask questions later" is typically the procedure for treating bacterial infections because the answers to those questions take a couple of days to elucidate while the lab cultures the bacteria to determine the strain.