Potential benefit with longer therapy for elderly patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) kept hope alive for them as well as Cyclacel Pharmaceuticals Inc., which heard from the data safety and monitoring board (DSMB) that the phase III study known as Seamless with lead candidate sapacitabine has crossed the futility boundary and is unlikely to reach a statistically significant level of survival. Read More
A little more than five months after netting $95.6 million in its first follow-on offering, Bluebird Bio Inc. is leveraging its soaring share value (NASDAQ:BLUE) for a secondary offering, planning to raise $211.4 million through the sale of about 2.7 million shares priced at $85 each. Read More
DUBLIN – Shares in Neovacs SA plummeted more than 50 percent Tuesday on news that its lead immunotherapy treatment for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), TNF-Kinoid, failed to show efficacy in a phase IIb trial in 140 patients. Read More
The Supreme Court swept away a hurdle Monday that kept drugmakers and other defendants from moving class action suits to federal courts under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA). Read More
HONG KONG – The R&D arm of a China-based health care group owned by the multinational conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. (HK:13) has moved its leading oncology candidate into phase III. Read More
SHANGHAI – In a case that has caused a stir among the community of returnee research scientists and even the wider drug-buying public, the U.S. attorney's office has taken the unusual move of requesting a federal judge to dismiss criminal charges filed against two former Eli Lilly and Co. employees of Chinese ethnicity working in the U.S. Read More
Crescendo Biologics Ltd., of Cambridge, UK, received a further equity investment from Astellas Venture Management (AVM) to support the discovery and development of new Humabody antibody fragment therapeutics in oncology. Financial details were not disclosed. Read More
Durect Corp., of Cupertino, Calif., signed an agreement with Santen Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., of Osaka, Japan, granting Santen the exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialize a sustained-release product utilizing Durect's Saber technology to deliver an ophthalmology drug. Read More
Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Carlsbad, Calif., said it started a phase I/II study of ISIS-DMPKRx in patients with myotonic dystrophy type 1, a rare genetic neuromuscular disease caused by the production of toxic dystrophia myotonica-protein kinase (DMPK) RNA in cells. Read More
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., of East Hanover, N.J., part of Novartis AG, said the FDA approved Signifor long-acting release (pasireotide) for the treatment of patients with acromegaly who have had an inadequate response to surgery and/or for whom surgery is not an option. Read More
Pfizer Inc., of New York, said detailed results from the phase II PALOMA-1 study of palbociclib in combination with letrozole vs. letrozole alone were published in The Lancet Oncology. Read More
