Pfizer Inc. wasn't shy about talking specifics with regard to synergy in its merger with Array Biopharma Inc., for which the pharma giant has agreed to pay $48 per share in cash – a 62% premium to Friday's closing price of $29.59 – in a deal with an enterprise value of about $11.4 billion. The boards of both companies have approved the merger, expected to finish in the second half of this year. Read More
Stepping through a door it opened last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Friday that states do not enjoy sovereign immunity from inter partes review (IPR). Read More
HONG KONG – China-based Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group Co. Ltd. had a strong debut on Hong Kong's stock market and raised $1 billion on Friday – despite widespread protests and a political crisis here – becoming the biggest health care IPO in Hong Kong this year. Read More
While VBI Vaccines Inc.'s Protect phase III top-line data showed the hepatitis B drug Sci-B-Vac met its co-primary endpoints, failure to meet a secondary endpoint sunk the company stock by 65.6% on Monday. Read More
LONDON – Probiodrug AG announced it is changing its name to Vivoryon Therapeutics AG, as it gears up to start a European and U.S. phase IIb program of PQ-912 in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, after securing grant and equity funding for the trials. Read More
AMSTERDAM – Since 2014, approvals and expanding indications for Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors Imbruvica (ibrutinib, Pharmacyclics LLC/Janssen Biotech Inc.) and Calquence (acalabrutinib, Astrazeneca plc), and Bcl-2 inhibitor Venclexta (venetoclax, Abbvie Inc./Roche AG) have given many chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients chemotherapy-free treatment options. Many cancer patients dread chemotherapy almost as much as they dread their cancer, and frail patients may be unable to withstand the toxicities of chemotherapy and greatly prefer those chemotherapy-free regimens. Read More
There is wide variability of individual responses to a specific prescription drug. That can have some genetic basis inherent to a particular individual, but the microbiome also has been suspected to play a part. Read More
Diagnosing serious infections in the hospital is often a process of elimination. A series of tests for individual suspected pathogens are used one at a time, sometimes while treatment is already in progress without a definitive diagnosis. But the cause of roughly half of serious infections, such as meningitis, encephalitis, pneumonia and sepsis, remain undiagnosed via such a process. Read More
Prometic Life Sciences Inc., of Laval, Quebec, said it completed its equity rights offering, raising CA$37.99 million (US$28.35 million). The company will use the proceeds to finance ongoing operations, which include the plasma-derived therapeutics segment, small-molecule therapeutics segment and corporate functions. Read More
Beigene Ltd., of Beijing, signed an agreement with Celgene Corp., of Summit, N.J., to terminate the parties' global collaboration for tislelizumab, Beigene's investigational anti-PD-1 antibody, in advance of the pending acquisition of Celgene by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., of New York. In connection with the termination, Celgene has agreed to pay $150 million to Beigene. Read More
Merck & Co. Inc., Eli Lilly and Co., and Amgen Inc., along with the Association of National Advertisers Inc., filed suit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to stop a rule requiring TV ads for most prescription drugs to include the wholesale acquisition cost (WAC) of the drug. Read More
