The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) pharmaceutical market has been estimated to exhibit more than 10 percent growth during the next five years and be worth $45 billion, mainly driven by rapidly changing population dynamics, including an evolving middle class that is accelerating the demand for new medicines. Read More
Fall is officially here with Tuesday's announcements of the 2015 Lasker Awards, which went to James Allison, Evelyn Witkin, Stephen Elledge and the organization Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders. Read More
Wellstat Therapeutics Corp. gained a rare pediatric disease priority review voucher (PRV) from the FDA with the agency's approval of Xuriden (uridine triacetate), a pyrimidine analogue for uridine replacement for the treatment of hereditary orotic aciduria (HOA), a potentially life-threatening disease known to impact fewer than 22 children worldwide. Read More
LONDON – Shield Therapeutics Ltd. is to raise up to £110 million (US$168 million) in an IPO on the London Stock Exchange, providing funding to push its anemia and hyperphosphatemia treatments through FDA and EMA approvals and build its own sales infrastructure to market the drugs. Read More
With Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMS) as well as Roche AG and Astrazeneca plc offering new data at the World Conference on Lung Cancer in Denver, analysts were hard pressed to pick the best wager, though one survey of people on the buy side suggested that they found BMS's combination therapy most impressive. Read More
DUBLIN – European biotechnology continued its strong post-summer momentum, with two private equity deals disclosed Tuesday, a €36.6 million (US$41 million) series C round at Spanish firm Laboratoris Sanifit S.L. and a $21 million series A round at London-based Reviral Ltd. Read More
DUBLIN – With little appetite for biotech in its home market, Finnish biotech firm Faron Pharmaceuticals Oy is seeking £20 million (US$30.5 million) in an IPO on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange, to fund a phase III trial of its lead drug, Traumakine (FP-1201, interfero-beta-1a), in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Read More
LONDON - Armetheon Inc. is poised to open the pivotal phase III trial of its oral anticoagulant, tecarfarin, and is raising a private round to fund the 3,000-patient study, which has FDA special protocol assessment (SPA) status. Read More
Cognition Therapeutics Inc., of Pittsburgh, said it completed a series B preferred stock financing totaling $12 million. Golden Seeds led the investment syndicate, which included Bios Memory SPV1, Cowtown Angels, Scale Investors, Dolby Family Ventures and Maine Angels, as well as additional life sciences investors. Read More
Endocyte Inc., of West Lafayette, Ind., presented final overall survival (OS) analysis from the phase IIb TARGET trial of small-molecule-drug conjugate vintafolide in combination with docetaxel in patients with folate receptor-positive recurrent non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) at the World Conference on Lung Cancer in Denver. Read More
Depomed Inc., of Newark, Calif., confirmed that Horizon Pharma plc, of Dublin, said it commenced an unsolicited exchange offer to acquire all outstanding shares of Depomed, offering an exchange ratio of 0.95 of Horizon shares for each share of Depomed. Read More
