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.
Even before he helped found antibody firm Alder Biopharmaceuticals Inc. in 2004, Chief Scientific Officer John Latham had a developed a taste for small firms and start-ups.
The buyout of Talon Therapeutics Inc. by Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc. for $11.3 million in cash up front and contingent value rights (CVRs) for up to $195 million indicate that the earnout deal remains alive and well in biotech.
Crushing debt forced Unigene Laboratories Inc. into bankruptcy earlier this year, but its promising Peptelligence delivery technology has found a new home in start-up Enteris Biopharma Inc., which launched recently to develop oral formulations of both peptide drugs and currently injectable-only small molecules.
The family of serine proteases known as granzymes – granule secreted enzymes – is a well-known target in the cancer space. Stored in cytotoxic T cells and natural killer cells, granzymes are released – with the help of pore-forming protein perforin – into the infected cell to trigger apoptosis.
