If the world needed any proof that money's still flowing in biotech, Portola Pharmaceuticals Inc. provided it by raising about $99.6 million in a public offering, and 2015's numbers so far regarding follow-on financings show a sharp trend upward, thanks partly to the parade of IPOs last year. Read More
United Therapeutics Corp. punched a golden ticket with Unituxin (dinutuximab, formerly ch14.18), which the FDA green-lighted to treat children with high-risk neuroblastoma, along with the award of a rare pediatric disease priority review voucher. Read More
LONDON – The quoted technology commercialization specialist IP Group plc is raising £128 million (US$193 million) in an oversubscribed placing, enabling it to increase investments in its portfolio of academic spinouts, and to start up companies based on research carried out at its new U.S. partner universities of Columbia, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. Read More
Graybug Inc., a spinout of Johns Hopkins University's Wilmer Eye Institute that's developing an experimental microparticle drug for wet age-related macular degeneration, has closed a $1.74 million series A2 financing to help advance a preclinical drug and further prove its sustained-release technology. Read More
Rather than offer up a buffet of ideas to streamline the development of new drugs, diagnostics and medical devices, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) hopes to boil down the Senate response to the House 21st Century Cures Initiative to a few meaningful ways to reduce the cost and time involved in getting a new cure from discovery to the medicine cabinet. Read More
HONG KONG – Expansion among Chinese biotech companies China Biologic Products Inc. (CBPO) and Wuxi Pharmatech (Cayman) Inc. that recently announced full-year 2014 results has ranged from fast to too fast – with the former seeing a more than doubling of its share price and the latter watching its shares tumble over the past year. Read More
Madison Vaccines Inc., of Madison, Wis., said it increased its series A financing to $11 million from $8 million with its current syndicate of investors to support three projects in early, advanced and late-stage prostate cancer. Read More
Ophthotech Corp., of New York, said it achieved a second $50 million enrollment milestone from Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis Pharma AG as part of the ex-U.S. licensing and commercialization agreement between the two companies focused on the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Read More
Halozyme Therapeutics Inc., of San Diego, said Genmab A/S, of Copenhagen, announced plans for a phase I trial of a subcutaneous formulation of the anti-CD38 antibody daratumumab using the Enhanze technology. Read More
Merck KGaA, of Darmstadt, Germany, said its biopharmaceutical unit, EMD Serono, entered a collaboration with Illumina Inc., of San Diego, to expand the development of a universal next-generation sequencing-based oncology diagnostic for clinical trials of targeted cancer therapies. Read More
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., of Osaka, Japan, said a post hoc analysis of data from the global EXAMINE (EXamination of CArdiovascular OutcoMes: AlogliptIN vs. Standard of CarE in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Acute Coronary Syndrome) cardiovascular (CV) safety outcomes trial was published in the The Lancet. Read More
