About a year after legislators lambasted Turing Pharmaceuticals’ former CEO, Martin Shkreli, for hiking by 5,000 percent the price of life-saving toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim, a firestorm has pummeled the biopharmaceutical industry, publicly shaming at least eight companies for drug price increases and demanding laws for transparency, negotiation, bidding and reimportation. Read More
Following a string of big pharma deals dating back to 2010, Tokyo-based Peptidream Inc. inked a potential $1.15 billion multitarget discovery and optimization collaboration with Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. that could be its largest yet. Read More
TOKYO – Despite the weakening yen and uncertainties in the drug pricing system, Japan’s pharmaceutical market is still the most attractive in the Asia-Pacific region and only second to the U.S. globally, according to a recent report by BMI Research. The market’s size and purchasing power as well as the strength of the regulatory environment makes the outlook of Japan’s pharmaceutical industry highly promising. Read More
A study by Taiwanese researchers has identified for the first time the receptor tyrosine-protein kinase HER2 as being a therapeutic target for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and provided proof-of-principle evidence for the rational design of new HER2-targeted AD treatments. Read More
Shares of Novocure Ltd. (NASDAQ:NVCR) got a boost last week – jumping 37 percent Monday – on a slew of data presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Washington, including final pivotal results in newly diagnosed glioblastoma (GBM) that included five-year survival data for its Optune device. That could help improve the status of the technology with payers and physicians, whose embrace hasn’t been uniform thus far. Read More
Prometic Life Sciences Inc., of Laval, Quebec, said it received a $9.5 million purchase order for the supply of affinity resin to an existing client, a global leader in the biopharmaceutical industry. Read More
Aurinia Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Victoria, British Columbia, disclosed the outcome of discussions with both the EMA and Japan’s PMDA regarding the development of the calcineurin inhibitor voclosporin for the treatment of active lupus nephritis. Read More
A monoclonal antibody isolated from a survivor of Marburg virus infection protected primates from death due to infection with either Marburg virus or the related Ravn virus, even if it was given five days after infection. Read More
