At least a year shy of the next milestone payment from partner Astellas Pharma Inc., Ambit Biosciences Inc. raised $50 million from existing investors to advance quizartinib in acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). Read More
Three years after its initial investment and two years after inking a research collaboration to discover drugs for schizophrenia, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. found Envoy Therapeutics Inc. irresistible, snagging the privately held company for up to $140 million in cash, including an undisclosed up-front payment and progress-dependent, preclinical milestone payments. Read More
French diagnostics firm Skuldtech SAS has emerged as the company behind a phenotypic biomarker that offers a simple predictive indication of which pancreatic cancer patients will benefit from an investigational tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) currently under regulatory review in Europe. Read More
• Cleveland BioLabs Inc., of Buffalo, N.Y., published results in the Journal of Immunology showing efficacy of entolimod (CBLB502) against graft-vs.-tumor activity in allogeneic bone marrow transplantation in mouse models. Read More
• Cryopraxis Cryobiology Ltd., of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and affiliate CellPraxis, of São Paulo, Brazil, plan to begin patient recruitment for the Brazilian arm of a Phase III refractory angina cell therapy trial by the end of 2012 or early 2013. Read More
• Taiho Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., of Tokyo, presented early stage data for multiple oncology compounds at the EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Dublin, Irealnd, including Phase II results showing that TAS-102 produced an improvement in overall survival in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. Read More
