For the first time in biopharma history, IPO values have crested the stalwart year of 2000, with companies raising a total of $7.44 billion globally by mid-October. Read More
New Leaf Venture Partners, which led the $54.5 million series A by startup Curasen Therapeutics Inc., got in on the ground floor of a previous venture by company co-founders Anthony Ford, named CEO, and Kathleen Sereda Glaub, executive chair. Their former effort, Afferent Pharmaceuticals Inc., went to Merck & Co. Inc. in a 2016 buyout worth up to $1.25 billion for the orally administered P2X3 antagonist AF-219 to treat refractory chronic cough and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis with cough. Read More
LONDON - The first shot has been fired in Europe's Humira (adalimumab) biosimilars price war, with National Health Service (NHS) England saying it will save £150 million (US$197 million) on the £400 million per year it currently spends on the anti-TNF-alpha drug. Read More
A survey of 48 oncologists by Leerink found that the use of a poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor in second-line maintenance of ovarian cancer could increase from about 45 percent to about 55 percent during the next 12 months. The class' utility there may be starting to plateau, but clinicians polled liked the prospects of expanded use into the front-line maintenance setting, as well as PARP retreatment. Read More
By sequencing the gut microbiome of individuals with bloodstream infections, researchers have challenged conventional medical wisdom about the source of those infections. The sequencing tool they developed, Strainsifter, may be used to inform antibiotic treatment for such infections in the future. Read More
SAN FRANCISCO - As the number of clinical trials testing checkpoint inhibitors in combination immunotherapies climbs ever-skyward, efforts to find ideal synergies have met both disappointments and challenges. Executives in the thick of efforts to identify the next best moves in the field highlighted some of the setbacks and the need to set aside haste in favor of careful science, to be open to new possibilities and to re-examine which endpoints might provide the best measures in new trials. Read More
Intelgenx Technologies Corp., of Saint Laurent, Quebec, received $1.63 million from the exercising of previously issued warrants to purchase about 2.9 million shares at an exercise price of $0.5646 per share. The company plans to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes. Read More
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit this week overturned a district court's certification of an antitrust class action against Dublin-based Allergan plc, because many members of the class weren't injured by the alleged delay of generic competition. Read More
Oligomerix Inc., of Bronx, N.Y., said it received a Small Business Innovation Research Phase IIb grant for $1.98 million from the NIH's National Institute on Aging. Funds will be used for preventive and therapeutic studies of lead small-molecule inhibitor targeting tau oligomers in transgenic models for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Read More
