LONDON – Another pharma has fallen for the attractions of Immunocore Ltd.’s T-cell receptors, with Astrazeneca plc signing a multiple-target deal with a price tag of $320 million per program. Read More
E-Therapeutics plc, of Oxford, UK, said an investigator-led Phase I trial testing synthetic cannibinoid ETS2101 in brain cancer will continue into 2014. Five dose-escalation steps have been completed without any drug-related serious adverse events and further patients are expected to be enrolled at higher dose levels. Read More
Alitair Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Morristown, N.J., said the FDA granted orphan drug designation to its bronchiectasis candidate, Erdosteine, which is approved for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic bronchitis in 50 countries outside the U.S. Read More
Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd., of Tokyo, said a marketing authorization application was submitted to the European Medicines Agency for its once-daily direct Factor Xa inhibitor, edoxaban, for the prevention of stroke and systemic embolic events in patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation. Read More
Burlington, Mass.-based Aldexa Therapeutics Inc. added itself to the crowded initial public offering (IPO) “runway,” filing its S-1 with the SEC to generate up to $20 million in an IPO. Read More
Privately held Bellicum Pharmaceuticals Inc. added another $14.7 million from existing investors, including AVG Ventures and Remeditex Ventures, to its fully subscribed Series B, ratcheting the total raise from the round to $34.4 million and extending the company’s runway into 2015. Read More
Neurocrine Biosciences Inc.’s tardive dyskinesia candidate, NBI-98854, nailed its endpoints in a Phase IIb (Kinect 2) study by causing a significant change from baseline in the abnormal involuntary movement scale (AIMS) after six weeks of treatment. Tardive dyskinesia is a syndrome characterized by involuntary, repetitive movements of the extremities. It has no approved treatment and is rarely reversible. Read More
Isarna Therapeutics GmbH raised €13 million (US$17.7 million) in new investments and has secured access to a new chemistry platform to take a fresh stab a developing antisense inhibitors of transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) in oncology indications. Read More
The rebound story of the week came via Epizyme Inc., which climbed mightily on news from the Phase I trial with its EPZ-5676 DOT1L histone methyltransferase (HMT) inhibitor, hitting a proof-of-concept milestone and bringing a $25 million payment from collaborator Celgene Corp. Read More
With an eye on the bottom line, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing a Part D rule change that would tip the formulary scale in favor of generics and, in time, biosimilars. Read More
A kinase that is often mutated in Parkinson’s disease, the leucine-rich repeat kinase (LRRK2), leads to trouble not because of its kinase activity, but because it interacts with another culprit in Parkinson’s: the protein alpha-synuclein. Read More
