DUBLIN – Forbion Capital Partners raised €92 million (US$116 million) in a first close of a new fund, FCF III, further evidence that Europe's biotechnology sector is exiting the funding freeze of recent years. Read More
Dermira Inc. raised about $125 million in an upsized initial public offering (IPO) Friday, selling 7.8 million shares (NASDAQ:DERM) at a top-of-range $16 each. The skin treatment developer, which is leveraging UCB Pharma SA's tumor necrosis factor-alpha inhibitor Cimzia (certolizumab pegol) to lead its charge into the underserved dermatology market, closed down 3.4 percent, or 54 cents, at $15.46. Read More
Salix Pharmaceuticals Ltd. and Cosmo Pharmaceuticals SpA have called off their $2.6 billion merger, which would have made Salix a wholly owned subsidiary of Cosmo Technologies Ltd., an Irish subsidiary of Cosmo. In a statement, Salix president and CEO Carolyn Logan cited the "uncertainty" created by the "changed political environment" after the U.S. Treasury proposed plans last month to make corporate tax inversions less attractive and even to halt such deals. Read More
LONDON – After stalling three times, the EMA Management Board has agreed to a policy on clinical trials data transparency, but in doing so has left both campaigners and the industry with concerns. Read More
Halozyme Therapeutics Inc., of San Diego, said the FDA granted orphan drug designation to pegylated recombinant human hyaluronidase (PEGPH20) for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. Halozyme is currently investigating PEGPH20 in a phase II study in combination with gemcitabine and Abraxane (nab-paclitaxel, Celgene Corp.) in metastatic pancreatic cancer. Read More
Neurocrine Bioscience Inc., of San Diego, said it started a 36-patient, open-label, multidose, two-week study of NBI-98854, a small-molecule vesicular monoamine transporter 2, or VMAT2, inhibitor, in both children and adolescents with Tourette syndrome. Read More
A group at the University of California's Gladstone Institutes has identified the mechanism by which insufficient progranulin causes dementia. Families with one deficient copy of the progranulin gene suffer from familial frontotemporal lobe dementia, and progranulin mutations are risk factors for Alzheimer's disease. Read More
