Like the troll of yore demanding his pound of goat flesh as the toll for using his bridge, patent trolls are threatening to swallow up biotech start-ups – just as they have other businesses that strayed too close to the vague boundary lines of their intellectual property. Read More
MedImmune Inc., part of AstraZeneca plc, started the first patient in its Phase III hairy-cell leukemia (HCL) trial with its first-in-class antibody-drug conjugate moxetumomab pasudotox (MP), a CD22 immunotoxin made up of an anti-CD22 antibody fused to a toxin. The molecule binds to CD22, gets internalized and processed, and then releases the toxin payload to blast the tumor. Read More
Oncothyreon Inc.'s detailed results for its cancer immunotherapy product L-BLP25 (formerly Stimuvax), reported at the meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in Chicago, failed to comfort nervous investors. Read More
TAIPEI, Taiwan – In what is likely one of the first attempts by a foreign biopharma to complete the full range of clinical trials in China for a new biologic, leading to regulatory and market approval by Chinese drug approval authorities, therapeutic antibodies specialist RuiYi Inc., of La Jolla, Calif., and Shanghai, entered a collaboration agreement with Genor BioPharma Co. Ltd., of Shanghai, to develop its anti-IL-6 monoclonal antibody RYI-008 for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Read More
• Northwest Biotherapeutics Inc., of Bethesda, Md., said its Phase III trial with DCVax-L for brain cancer has been initiated at King's College Hospital in the UK. Read More
• Oxygen Biotherapeutics Inc., of Morrisville, N.C., said the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel granted the company's request for continued listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market through June 3 to comply with the minimum $1 bid price requirement and through July 31 to comply with the minimum $2.5 million stockholders' equity requirement. Read More
• Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Wayne, N.J., signed a three-year agreement with the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) to evaluate life sciences start-up companies with the goal of advancing early stage technologies and therapeutics. Mission Bay Capital LLC will provide seed funding to the selected companies. Read More
