Frazier Healthcare Partners led the $40 million series A to launch Iterum Therapeutics Ltd., which will focus on in-licensing and developing anti-infective candidates targeting multidrug-resistant pathogens. Canaan Partners, Sofinnova Ventures and New Leaf Venture Partners joined the round for the newly formed biopharma, which said it licensed global rights from an undisclosed multinational pharma to an anti-infective that previously demonstrated in vitro activity against a variety of gram-negative, gram-positive and anaerobic bacteria that are resistant to other antibiotics. Read More
With 100 Americans dying every day as a result of opioid addictions, the FDA is under immense pressure to deliver a knockout blow to the growing epidemic. But so far, all it's managed are glancing jabs that may, or may not, have an impact in the real world. Read More
Among the insights to be had from the "minimal genome" cell that was reported Thursday is just how relative the term minimal is – a fact freely acknowledged by its creators. Read More
With sales of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) trap Eylea (aflibercept) as a monotherapy possibly slowing down, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Bayer AG have broadened their work in eye disease with a new $130 million agreement to test the treatment in combination with the angiopoietin2 (Ang2) antibody nesvacumab, and two phase II trials are enrolling patients with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) or diabetic macular edema (DME). Read More
SINGAPORE – Across much of Asia, and in China in particular, the responsibility of fighting for the rights of rare disease patients mostly falls on the shoulders of patient themselves. Read More
The SEC said Novartis AG, of Basel, Switzerland, agreed to pay $25 million to settle charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) when its China-based subsidiaries engaged in pay-to-prescribe schemes to increase sales. Read More
Merrimack Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., said the National Comprehensive Cancer Network included Onivyde (irinotecan liposome injection) in combination with fluorouracil and leucovorin in its 2016 Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology for pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Onivyde was approved last year. (See BioWorld Today, Oct. 23, 2015.) Read More
Sunesis Pharmaceuticals Inc., of South San Francisco, said the first patients have been treated in the investigator-sponsored VITAL (Vosaroxin and Infusional Cytarabine for Frontline Treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia) phase II study of vosaroxin in combination with cytarabine in patients with previously untreated acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Read More
