On the cusp of the New Year, obesity is in the news once again with the acquisition of privately held Marcadia Biotech Inc. by Roche Holding Ltd., of Basel, Switzerland. Read More
Genocea Biosciences Inc. has closed a $35 million Series B round of venture financing that the company expects will take it deep into clinical development of its lead program, a therapeutic vaccine for herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) infections, and bring candidates for chlamydia, pneumonia, malaria and herpes prophylaxis in its pipeline up to the clinical stage. Read More
In response to a blistering Institute of Medicine (IOM) report published in April 2010, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) will launch a major overhaul of its Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program. The 50-year-old program conducts a large number of nationwide trials of new cancer therapies, but has not kept up with advances in molecular oncology. The report, which was requested by the NCI, also dinged the system for being inefficient, cumbersome, underfunded and overly complex – problems the agency will work to correct. Read More
As BioWorld Insight readers know, our "Word on the Street" column provides a sample of the most entertaining and thought-provoking quotes our staff stumbles upon each week. Some are gathered during interviews, some gleaned from analyst reports and some overheard at conferences. Read More
Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB, of Stockholm, Sweden, announced that it has returned full development rights for its immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) treatment and for hemolytic disease in newborn (HDN) prophylaxis to Symphogen A/S, of Copenhagen, Denmark, co-developer of Sym001, which is currently in Phase II trials for treatment of ITP and in anti-D prophylaxis to prevent HDN. Read More
Immunitor USA Inc., of College Park, Md., has published data from the first half of the 120-patient imm01 Phase IIb trial of its V5 immunomodulator product for tuberculosis, including difficult-to-treat forms of the disease. Read More
