LONDON – It seems there is no stopping Allergan plc, which has signed its eighth sizeable deal in six months, paying $250 million of a potential $1.27 billion up front for a license to Astrazeneca plc's Medi2070, an IL-23 antibody in phase IIb development for Crohn's disease. Read More
Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc., of Canton, Mass., said it submitted a new drug submission to Health Canada to gain marketing approval for its abuse-deterrent opioid, Xtampza ER (oxycodone extended-release). Read More
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Tarrytown, N.Y., and Sanofi SA, of Paris, said detailed results from LIBERTY AD SOLO 1 and SOLO 2, two placebo-controlled phase III studies evaluating Dupixent (dupilumab) in adult patients with inadequately controlled moderate to severe atopic dermatitis (AD), were published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Read More
Novabay Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Emeryville, Calif., said that during the third quarter it received $7 million from the early exercise of 3.67 million warrants issued as part of five previously completed financings. Read More
DUBLIN – Carrick Therapeutics Ltd. raised an eye-catching $95 million in a series A funding and declared its ambition to become Europe's leading oncology company by pursuing a new approach to cancer therapy. Read More
Investments in U.S. private biopharmaceutical companies tracked by BioWorld were up about 20 percent year over year in the third quarter, raising nearly $1.7 billion compared to about $1.4 billion in the year-ago quarter. Read More
With Alzheimer's-focused spinout Axovant Sciences Ltd. currently holding the record for largest biopharma IPO – last year's $362 million raise – another Roivant Ltd.-launched firm is testing the public markets. Read More
Amid slower-than-anticipated sales of its second-line pancreatic cancer drug Onivyde (irinotecan liposome injection), Merrimack Pharmaceuticals Inc. president and CEO Robert Mulroy resigned and the company moved to cut 22 percent of its work force in a major restructuring it said would prioritize its R&D efforts and eliminate more than $200 million in expected costs over the next two years. Read More
"Basically, it's not easy to define what will serve humanity." So said Yoshinori Ohsumi, honorary professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, after winning the 2012 Kyoto Prize in Life Sciences for his research. Read More
SHANGHAI – It's not often that Chinese biopharmas are able to nab China rights for a promising late-stage oncology candidate in global trials. But that's exactly what Shanghai-based Zai Labs Ltd. did when it obtained exclusive China rights for niraparib from Tesaro Inc. Read More
Psoriasis trial results "tend to vary a little bit" between experiments, Dermira Inc.'s chief development officer Luis Peña told BioWorld Today, but consistency of data in two yet-to-report phase III studies with Cimzia (certolizumab pegol) is "nothing we're concerned about." Read More
While U.S. government-supported clinical trials of Zika vaccines are progressing, the damage caused by a delay in funding will continue to hurt other programs, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell said Monday in a media call to discuss progress in the battle against the mosquito-borne virus. Read More
