Despite the fact that private biotechs raised just $1.76 billion in the first five months of 2011 – putting this year on pace to be not only worse than last year, but worse than the dreaded low of 2008 – Seed and Series A funding accounts for a bigger piece of the pie. You heard that right. According to data from BioWorld Insight and BioWorld Snapshots, Seed and Series A rounds accounted for a healthy 27.5 percent of private biotech funding so far in 2011, up from just 17.7 percent in 2010. Here’s the catch. The biggest start-up round this...

Six months after receiving a complete response letter for epilepsy drug Potiga (ezogabine), Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. and partner GlaxoSmithKline plc gained approval of the potassium channel opener as an adjunctive treatment for partial-onset seizures.

Although Anthera Pharmaceuticals Inc. already had sufficient funding to complete its ongoing Phase III trial with varespladib for acute coronary syndrome and its ongoing Phase II trial with blisibimod for lupus, the biotech raised $50 million in a public stock offering.

Shares of Affymax Inc. have yet to recover from the beating they took about a year ago when Phase III data for peginesatide (formerly Hematide) fell short of investor expectations, but that hasn't stopped the Palo Alto, Calif.-based biotech and partner Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. from moving forward with a new drug application (NDA).

Despite the fact that recent biotech product launches have fallen short of analyst expectations across the board, there's reason to believe these drugs might yet achieve their peak sales potential and foster a new wave of fully integrated pharmaceutical companies.

After more than a decade of development, Genta Inc. appears to be putting beleaguered antisense drug Genasense (oblimersen sodium) out of its misery.

It looked Monday as if two of biotech’s long-suffering names might finally be biting the dust. Genta Inc. threw in the towel on beleaguered antisense drug Genasense (oblimersen sodium), after a final analysis of a Phase III melanoma trial – and a previous Phase III melanoma trial, and a Phase III chronic lymphocytic leukemia trial, and a Phase III multiple myeloma trial, and a melanoma approval bid, and a CLL approval bid, and a second CLL approval bid – failed. Meanwhile La Jolla Pharmaceutical Co., which already abandoned lupus drug Riquent (abetimus sodium) after years of mixed data and failed...