Recently formed early stage cancer drug company Peloton Therapeutics Inc. raised $18 million in a Series A financing that reunited Tularik Inc. co-founders Steven L. McKnight and David Goeddel.
Contract research organizations (CRO) have been ramping up their roles in drug development, usually by partnering with or taking equity stakes in biotech firms. But PPD Inc. took the trend a step further last year when it spun out drug development company Furiex Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Biogen Idec Inc. may have missed its earnings estimates by a penny, but that news was trumped by growing revenues from multiple sclerosis (MS) drug Tysabri (natalizumab), which jumped 28 percent over last year largely due to the availability of a JC virus assay to manage risk for progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML).
Raptor Pharmaceuticals Corp.'s RP103, a delayed-release version of cysteamine, hit its primary endpoint in a Phase III study in nephropathic cystinosis, putting the firm in a good position for filing a new drug application (NDA) in the ultra-orphan indication, though that success was not exactly mirrored in the company's stock.
Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. wowed investors on its earnings yet again, with second-quarter revenues that soundly beat expectations and prompted the Cheshire, Conn.-based firm to raise for the second time its 2011 sales guidance for paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) drug Soliris (eculizumab).
When formed in 2010, the founders of TWi Biotechnology Inc. always had in mind a two-pronged strategy: going after generic markets to get relatively quick returns while investing in longer-term innovative drug development programs.
In what may be one of the more questionable mergers in biotech history, AMAG Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Allos Therapeutics Inc., two firms that have little in common besides recently launched products that have underperformed commercially, agreed to combine in an all-stock deal valued at about $686 million.
Only days after Seattle Genetics Inc. earned unanimous backing from an advisory panel for its Adcetris (brentuximab vedotin) in two lymphoma indications based on single-arm studies, another company is testing the FDA's accelerated approval pathway.
