With the acquisition of Trius Therapeutics Inc. and Optimer Pharmaceuticals Inc. after the market closed Tuesday for a total of more than $1.6 billion, Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc. has made a play to position itself as an antibiotic powerhouse in the biotech field. Read More
Amgen Inc. soundly beat second quarter revenue and earnings estimates, but it was the big biotech's acquisition strategy that was the elephant in the room during the Tuesday evening conference call, as company executives were able to head off attempts to tease out details regarding rumors of its recent – and rejected – $10 billion bid for Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc. Read More
Edimer Pharmaceuticals Inc. showed that ultra-rare indications continue to resonate with investors, pulling in $18 million in a Series B to fund trials of EDI200, an ectodysplasin-A (EDA-A1) replacement protein that represents the first in a class of molecules rationally designed to correct a specific developmental disorder. Read More
Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Washington, was granted priority review status for tasimelteon, its candidate for non-24-hour disorder in people who are totally blind. Non-24 affects a majority of blind people, or 65,000 to 95,000 people in the U.S. Read More
Investors scratched their heads, but thet didn't seem to worry over-much about the halting of the monotherapy arm of a Phase II/III, Cardiff University-sponsored trial with vosaroxin, Sunesis Pharmaceutical Inc.'s quinolone derivative for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Read More
Shares in Adocia SAS plunged by as much as 45 percent Tuesday on news that Eli Lilly and Co. has pulled out of an alliance to develop an ultra-fast-acting insulin analogue for diabetes based on Adocia's Biochaperone formulation technology. Read More
By applying an approach that is more commonly used in fruit flies and worms to mice, researchers have identified several new pathways that are disturbed in the autism spectrum disorder Rett syndrome. One of those pathways turned out to be cholesterol biosynthesis, and statins improved the symptoms of mice with Rett syndrome. Read More
• Antitope Ltd., of Cambridge, UK, signed a research agreement with Faron Pharmaceuticals Ltd., of Turku, Finland, to generate therapeutic monoclonal antibodies against the Clever-1 receptor. Read More
• Immunocellular Therapeutics Ltd., of Los Angeles, said it started a Phase I trial of cancer vaccine ICT-121 as a potential treatment for patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Read More
• Novartis AG, of Basel, Switzerland, disclosed that a patient taking the oral multiple sclerosis pill Gilenya (fingolimod) developed potentially fatal viral disease progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. Read More
