William Kaelin, Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza have jointly won the 2019 Nobel Prize "for their discoveries of how cells sense oxygen," the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet announced Monday. Read More
Akcea Therapeutics Inc., a majority owned affiliate of Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc., and Pfizer Inc. signed an exclusive, worldwide licensing deal for AKCEA-ANGPTL-3-LRx, which is being developed to treat cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. The deal follows a period during which Akcea's stock (NASDAQ:AKCA) has sagged prior to rising Monday and big changes in the company's C-suite. Read More
Investors sorting through NGM Biopharmaceuticals Inc.'s interim results from the fourth and final cohort of the adaptive phase II trial with aldafermin in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) may have felt let down when comparing the data to previous cohorts' outcomes. Shares of the South San Francisco-based firm (NASDAQ:NGM) closed Monday at $10.78, having sunk $2.77 or 20.4%. Read More
WASHINGTON – While the vast majority of people infected with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) muddle through with mild, cold-like symptoms, for infants, the associated bronchiolitis can make it extremely difficult to breathe and feed. Thousands require inpatient care for the infection each year, necessitating hospitals to be built with a winter surge of admissions in mind, driven in large part by RSV in both the very young and old. Read More
LONDON – Mirobio Ltd. has spun out of Oxford University, raising £27 million (US$33.3 million) to develop antibody-based therapies designed to activate immune checkpoint receptors in the treatment of autoimmune disorders. Read More
In the third quarter, global biopharmaceutical companies collectively raised more than $12 billion from public and private transactions. Year to date (YTD), the sector has generated $41.5 billion, according to BioWorld data, putting it on track for a $55 billion haul for the year. Read More
Heading into the final quarter, the sector's leading biopharmaceutical companies once again underperformed the general market in September. Overall, the third quarter was extremely lackluster with investors showing little interest in getting involved, a situation that is likely to prevail until the end of the year. Companies will need to release strong 3Q financial reports just to tread water in the coming months. Read More
PTC Therapeutics Inc., of South Plainfield, N.J., said it formed a collaboration with Aldevron LLC, of Fargo, N.D., to secure GMP manufacturing capacity for its gene therapy portfolio, including Friedreich ataxia and Angelman syndrome programs in its gene therapy pipeline. Financial terms were not disclosed. Read More
The U.S. Supreme Court opened its October term Monday with arguments in Peter v. Nantkwest, which questions the Patent and Trademark Office's (PTO) demands for attorney fees, win or lose, when an applicant challenges the denial of a patent in federal district court. Read More
Innate Pharma SA, of Marseille, France, said it intends to issue and sell, subject to market and other conditions, about 10.7 million of its ordinary shares in a global offering to specified categories of investors, comprised of an initial public offering of American depositary shares (ADSs), each representing one ordinary share, in the U.S., and a concurrent private placement of ordinary shares in Europe and other countries outside the U.S. Read More
The emerging methodology of federated learning can overcome many of the ethical and privacy obstacles preventing patient data from being pooled for analysis, according to research published this week. French-American artificial intelligence (AI) specialist Owkin Inc. has demonstrated the technique can be used to apply machine learning to datasets held at different clinical centers. In a paper published in the Oct. 7 online edition of Nature Medicine, they describe how that generated new insights into the histopathology of malignant mesothelioma. Read More
