In its fourth substantial public offering in two years, Synageva Biopharma Corp. padded its balance sheet with a $155.7 million to accelerate its aspirations of becoming a global rare disease company replete with burgeoning pipeline programs, manufacturing and commercial infrastructure.
Less than three months after the FDA rejected insomnia candidate suvorexant, the agency issued a complete response letter (CRL) for another Merck & Co. Inc. drug, giving analysts and investors additional ammunition in the call for a “major restructuring” in the company’s R&D division.
Bind Therapeutics Inc. followed two other biotechs through the initial public offering (IPO) window last week, pricing 4.7 million shares at $15 apiece, the midpoint of its proposed range, though it didn’t fare quite as well as its cohorts in its first Wall Street appearance.
This year’s flurry of initial public offering (IPO) activity continued Wednesday, as protein and antibody drug developer Five Prime Therapeutics Inc. priced an upsized offering to gross $64.5 million and ophthalmology firm Aerie Pharmaceuticals Inc. added its name to biotech’s IPO queue.
Pitching a rare disease program to prospective partners and investors these days sounds like it should be a fairly easy task. Biotech and pharma firms have more than 500 programs in the rare disease pipeline and orphan indications are an increasingly hot property for the industry. (See BioWorld Insight, April 29, 2013.)
Only a few months after its impressive Nasdaq debut, antiviral firm Chimerix Inc. started dosing in its Phase III SUPPRESS trial testing oral nucleotide analogue lipid-conjugate brincidofovir (CMX001) for the prevention of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection in hematopoietic cell transplant recipients.
The FDA approved Celgene Corp.’s Abraxane Friday for use in pancreatic adenocarcinoma. It’s the first drug approved for patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer in nearly eight years, and analysts are expecting the combination of the albumin-bound version of paclitaxel and gemcitabine to become the new standard of care in what has remained an intractable disease.
Macrogenics Inc. joined the roster of biotechs to file for initial public offerings (IPOs) this year, filing an S-1 with aims of raising up to $60 million to support its cancer drug pipeline.
Shares of Rigel Pharmaceuticals Inc. were dinged Monday morning after the company said it would discontinue development of Syk inhibitor R343 in allergic asthma following a Phase II miss, another setback for the South San Francisco-based firm’s pipeline.
Chemocentryx Inc. will have to await word from partner Glaxosmithkline plc on the future of vercirnon after the CCR9 antagonist missed its endpoint in the first of four Phase III studies in moderate to severe Crohn's disease.
