The drug development graveyard that is Alzheimer's disease has claimed yet another victim. This time it's AC Immune SA's ACI-91, a drug that had offered a new approach to tackling this most intractable of diseases. Read More
Genentech Inc., a unit of the Roche Group, could add another agent to its formidable oncology arsenal if initial findings from a Phase III study of lead hematology candidate GA101 (obinutuzumab) are borne out in a three-arm trial. Read More
Late last year, when federal appeals judges threw out the conviction of a former pharma sales rep for off-label marketing after the rep argued that prosecuting him had violated his freedom of speech, the industry could not be sure what it meant for the rest of them. Read More
In the second biotech initial public offering (IPO) to price this week, antibody drug developer KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc. priced a slightly upsized offering of 8.75 million shares at $8 apiece for gross proceeds of $70 million. Like Stemline Therapeutics Inc., which priced an IPO Tuesday, KaloBios came in at the low end of its expected pricing range. Read More
• Alkermes plc, of Dublin, Ireland, reported net income of $46.5 million, or 34 cents per share, for the three months ending Dec. 31 – the firm's third fiscal quarter – which solidly beat analyst estimates of 26 cents per share. Read More
• Dyax Corp., of Burlington, Mass., and Novellus Biopharma AG, of Bogota, Colombia, inked a partnership for the development and commercialization of hereditary angioedema drug Kalbitor (ecallantide) in select regions in Latin America, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. Read More
• Arteriocyte Inc., of Cleveland, said it received FDA approval to start a Phase I trial testing its Magellan System technology in the treatment of thermal burn wounds. Read More
• Pfizer Inc., of New York, said the District Court of Delaware ruled that its patent covering a method for using sirolimus, the active ingredient in Rapamune, for the inhibition of organ transplant rejection is valid and infringed. Read More
