Privately held Aragon Pharmaceuticals Inc. landed $42 million in an oversubscribed Series C financing to advance its pipeline of therapies targeting hormone-driven cancers, including ARN-509, the company's lead compound for the treatment of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). Read More
LONDON – Shield Therapeutics Ltd. signed an exclusive agreement with the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) for PT20, a treatment for hyperphosphatemia caused by kidney disease, and raised €10.5 million (US$13.9 million) for the onward development of the compound, which is ready for Phase II. Read More
The statistics on stroke are enough to make the most hard-boiled drug developer cry. "Over a thousand treatments that have been developed in cells and in rodents have failed," Michael Tymianski told BioWorld Today. Read More
• Arrowhead Research Corp., of Pasadena, Calif., and custom research organization Axolabs GmbH, of Kulmbach, Germany, inked an alliance and master services agreement for Axolabs to provide Arrowhead and its partners with first-in-class oligonucleotide optimization, synthesis and analysis for siRNA therapeutics. Read More
• Endocyte Inc., of West Lafayette, Ind., said the FDA approved its importation of a supply of Doxil (doxorubicin) from Europe for a Phase III trial (PROCEED). The trial began in May 2011, but the company stopped enrollment because of global shortages of Doxil. PROCEED compares EC145 in combination with Doxil to Doxil alone for ovarian cancer. Read More
• Teva Pharmaceuticals Ltd., of Jerusalem, reported findings from four Phase III trials showing that QNASL (beclomethasone dipropionate), a nasal aerosol corticosteroid, produced a significant change from baseline weekly averages of the subject-reported 24-hour reflective nasal symptom scores (rTNSS) over the first 30 weeks of treatment in patients with seasonal allergic rhinitis and perennial allergic rhinitis. Read More