Viiv Healthcare Group has continued its quest for patient-friendly long-acting HIV drugs, signing a potential $740 million deal with Halozyme Therapeutics Inc. to develop injections that could be dosed more than six months apart.
Tarsus Pharmaceuticals Inc. announced results from a pivotal trial of its therapy for Demodex blepharitis, which could lead to an FDA filing to treat the common eye disease for which there are no FDA-approved medications.
Shares in Orphazyme A/S cratered after the FDA rejected its arimoclomol for Niemann-Pick disease type C, a rare and potentially fatal inherited condition where fat builds in tissues and organs.
Apollo Therapeutics LLC has completed a $145 million financing to develop its business model, based on building a portfolio of drugs through relationships with U.K. academic institutions.
Artios Pharma Ltd. plans to begin the first clinical trials of a POLQ inhibitor class cancer drug later this year. There are a handful of companies working on POLQ inhibitor drugs, the name of the gene that encodes the enzyme DNA polymerase theta, but it looks like Artios has taken a head start following the publication of the supportive study in Nature Communications.
Zai Lab Ltd. and Macrogenics Inc. have announced a collaboration and license agreement involving up to four immuno-oncology molecules in a deal potentially worth upward of $1.5 billion. The deal makes sense as both are upcoming companies at around the same stage in development – making progress in oncology with first products recently approved by regulators.
There’s been a mixed bag of data from Astrazeneca plc’s efforts against COVID-19, after data suggested Pfizer Inc.’s rival vaccine is more effective against the Delta variant and the failure of a trial involving its long-acting antibody therapy.
Biogen Inc. has announced contrasting results from phase III trials of therapies for a rare eye disease and depression, following last week’s controversial FDA approval of Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm. The Cambridge, Mass.-based firm said a phase III gene therapy study in the rare retinal disease choroideremia missed its primary and secondary endpoints, although the news was better from a potential therapy for major depressive disorder.
Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Cilag Ltd. pharma unit has phase III data from its project combining the oral blood cancer drug Imbruvica (ibrutinib) with its blockbuster rival, Venclexta (venetoclax), in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), which could give it an edge over competitors in the space.
Sanofi SA has announced new pivotal data that will form the basis of a refiling of rare disease drug sutimlimab for people with cold agglutinin disease (CAD).
