CHICAGO – With five-year survival rates of 15 percent, lung cancer treatment is not, overall, one of oncology's poster children. Partly, that's due to the sheer genomic complexity of the disease. And the disease, like its most frequent cause, smoking, comes with social stigma. Read More
Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. used the American Society of Clinical Oncology's (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago as its forum to confirm that the next steps for its investigational pan-BCR-ABL inhibitor, ponatinib, will be regulatory filings in the U.S. and Europe, expected in the third quarter. Read More
If Congress wants to curtail drug shortages, it needs to put some teeth in a PDUFA V provision that requires companies to notify the FDA six months in advance of events that could lead to a shortage, according to a panel at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). Read More
Stock in Cleveland Biolabs Inc. surged 63 percent following the release of results from its efficacy study of radiation countermeasure product, CBLB502, showing a nearly threefold increase in overall survival among rats exposed to a 70 percent lethal dose of radiation. Read More
CHICAGO – Roche AG subsidiary Genentech Inc. and partner ImmunoGen Inc. had what looks to be another winner at Sunday's plenary session of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting. Read More
• Coronado Biosciences Inc., of Burlington, Mass., filed a registration statement with the SEC for a public offering of 2 million shares of common stock. Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. and Roth Capital Partners are acting as joint book-running managers. Read More
• China Nuokang Bio-Pharmaceutical Inc., of Beijing, said the independent committee of the company's board of directors evaluating the acquisition proposal from Chairman and CEO Baizhong Xue appointed Lazard and Houlihan Lokey as its independent financial advisors. In May, Xue proposed to acquire the outstanding shares not currently owned by Xue or companies under his control. Read More
• Cyclacel Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Berkeley Heights, N.J., provided new data from a Phase I trial of two product candidates, sapacitabine, a nucleoside analogue, and seliciclib, a CDK inhibitor, as an orally administered sequential treatment regimen in heavily pretreated patients with advanced solid tumors. Read More
• FibroGen Inc., of San Francisco, reported preliminary findings from two ongoing Phase II trials, demonstrating that FG-4592, its oral hypoxia-inducible factor prolyl hydroxylase inhibitor, reduced blood pressure in hypertensive patients, reduced cholesterol levels and improved the ratio of high-density lipoprotein to low-density lipoprotein in lipid profiles in patients with chronic kidney disease (CK). FG-4592 is in development for anemia in CKD. Read More
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., of New York, reported four-year results from the long-term extensions of the BENEFIT and BENEFIT-EXT trials evaluating Nulojix (belatacept), its selective T-cell co-stimulation blocker indicated for the prophylaxis of organ rejection in adult Epstein-Barr virus-seropositive patients receiving a kidney transplant, in combination with basiliximab induction, mycophenolate mofetil and corticosteroids. Read More
