Last year was rather rough for Xoma Corp. In March 2011, the company saw its interleukin-1 beta inhibitor gevokizumab miss its primary endpoint in a Phase IIb trial in Type II diabetes, eliminating the opportunity to enter the lucrative market. (See BioWorld Today, March 24, 2011.)

While most of the industry focuses on beta amyloid and tau as targets for Alzheimer's disease, Accera Inc. has turned its attention to a deficit in the ability of Alzheimer's patients' brain cells to metabolize glucose.

Three pharmas have teamed up to create the Investigator Databank to benefit clinical trial investigators by reducing administrative redundancy and to make it easier for the companies to find investigators for their clinical trials.

Oncology drugs are expensive enough on their own. When they start getting used in succession, the cost per patient can really start to add up, causing companies to feel pushback from payers.

A little over a year after Alkermes plc completed its acquisition of Elan Drug Technologies (EDT), the drug delivery organization of Elan Corp., the now Irish-based company is clearly reaping the rewards from the acquisition. (See BioWorld International, May 11, 2011, and Sept. 21, 2011.)

Just like their human owners, dogs and cats are living longer, increasing the number of animals that need treatments. And companion animals are increasingly becoming part of the family, escalating the willingness of owners to pay for those treatments.

Last week, Pfizer Inc. exercised the option it established earlier this year to acquire NextWave Pharmaceuticals for $255 million up front and potentially another $425 million based on certain sales milestones.

After selling off its commercial and cardiovascular operating segments and spinning the remaining R&D operations into Facet Biotech Corp., PDL BioPharma Inc. became dependent on royalties from humanized antibody products covered under licenses of its Queen et al. patents.

Optimer Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s Dificid (fidaxomicin), the first new product approved for Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD) in more than 25 years, has a superior rate of sustained clinical response through 25 days after the end of treatment compared to oral vancomycin. (See BioWorld Today, May 31, 2011.)

Threshold Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s data for TH-302 in pancreatic cancer isn't perfect, but the biotech and its partner Merck KGaA think the Phase IIb results are good enough to justify pushing the drug into a Phase III trial for the indication.