Abbvie Inc.'s agreement to take over Allergan plc in a cash and stock deal worth about $63 billion jarred Wall Street and set pundits mulling the price tag – seen by some as too low – along with the prospects for a satisfying marriage as pipelines are sorted out. Read More
Shares of Acer Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:ACER) fell 78.6% to $4.12 Tuesday after the FDA issued a complete response letter (CRL)calling for the company to conduct an "adequate and well-controlled trial" to determine whether the orphan-designated beta-blocker Edsivo (celiprolol) reduces the risk of clinical events in patients with vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (vEDS), an inherited connective tissue disorder. Read More
LONDON – Laboratoris Sanifit SL has closed Spain's largest ever private biotech round, raising €72.2 million (US$80.9 million) to fund phase III development of SNF-472 in the treatment of calciphylaxis, an orphan disease that occurs in end-stage renal disease patients on dialysis. Read More
DUBLIN – It's the kind of deal that says a lot more about a company's scientific chops than about its financial prospects, but Erytech Pharma SA entered an agreement with SQZ Biotechnologies Inc., under which the latter firm will have exclusive access to Erytech's red blood cell (RBC) platform for therapies that modulate the immune system. Read More
HONG KONG –Terns Pharmaceuticals Inc., a company based in China and the U.S., entered a licensing and collaboration agreement with French company Genfit SA to develop and commercialize elafibranor, in development for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and primary biliary cholangitis (PBC). Read More
DUBLIN – Two years after announcing a first close, Vesalius Biocapital Partners SàRL has topped out its third fund, Vesalius Biocapital III (VB-III), at €120 million (US$136.6 million). Read More
Frontier Medicines Corp. closed on a series A preferred stock financing round of $67 million for honing its pipeline and prepping for the clinic. Read More
Tetra Bio-Pharma Inc., of Ottawa, Ontario, said it priced its marketed public offering of units at a CA30 cents (US23 cents) per unit, which will consist of one common share and one common share purchase warrant that will entitle its holder to acquire one common share at an exercise price of CA40 cents. Read More
The dispute over who invented the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing system for eukaryotic cells took a new turn Tuesday with the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) declaring an interference between 10 University of California (UC) patent applications and several U.S. patents already issued to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Broad Institute. Read More
Bound Therapeutics LLC, of Marlton, N.J., said the National Cancer Institute has awarded the company a Small Business Technology Transfer grant for $300,000 to develop a treatment focused on microRNA-21 blockade of triple-negative breast cancer. Read More
