AVI BioPharma Inc., which recently vowed to speed up work on Duchenne's muscular dystrophy (DMD) candidate AVI-4658, is padding its coffers with a $30 million public offering.
A week after President and CEO Howard W. Robin told investors at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco that Nektar Therapeutics Inc. planned to move into Phase III on its own with cancer drug NKTR-102, the firm priced a hefty public offering to bolster its cash reserves.
It was just as MannKind Corp.'s bearish investors predicted when the FDA said it was extending the PDUFA date for inhaled insulin candidate Afrezza: The agency issued a complete response letter – the second – for use of the product in Type I and Type II diabetes.
SAN FRANCISCO ‑ At this week’s BIO Investor Forum in San Francisco, there was talk of how the biotech industry has squandered money, paying for infrastructure when it should have been paying only for development and continuing to fund programs even when the early data weren’t stellar. I admit it is frustrating to write about companies that are launching yet another Phase III study, because they claim their drug’s “really going to work this time.” And the skyrocketing drug development costs are one reason my fellow Americans and I are paying a fortune every month for health care. During a...
SAN FRANCISCO – The final day of the 2011 BIO Investor Forum started with some encouraging news: The discovery-stage deal is alive and well for biotech.In the last two months alone, BioWorld Today has reported on several deals, including Ipsen SA's multi-asset deal with Syntaxin Ltd. for botulinum toxin drugs; Merck Serono SA's potential $691 million inflammatory disease antibody collaboration with F-Star GmbH; and Merck & Co. Inc. becoming the first major commercialization partner in an early stage deal for Zymeworks Inc.'s bi-specific antibody technology.
SAN FRANCISCO – As hundreds of protestors gathered only a few streets away to oppose a fundraising luncheon for President Obama, biotech executives and investors gathered at the Palace Hotel were waging their own protest – albeit without signs and slogans – to the traditional drug development model.
SAN FRANCISCO – A host of biotech execs and investors converge at the Palace Hotel here Tuesday for the two-day BIO Investor Forum, hoping to spark renewed vigor in a sector that's just come off a bleak third quarter in terms of fundraising, with public and private financings for the industry down 48 percent compared to last year.
Optimism could be building for Sanofi SA's Lemtrada (alemtuzumab), the drug at the center of negotiations surrounding the big pharma's acquisition of Genzyme Corp. earlier this year, following the release of detailed data from the first pivotal trial in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) patients that boosts positive top-line results reported in July.
Even as analysts are looking for Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. to report a third-quarter profit next week on better-than-expected sales of hepatitis C drug Incivek (telaprevir), the Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech is gearing up to launch a second drug.
