CLEVELAND – The list is out, and a dual-acting osteoporosis drug and a device for expanding the use of minimally invasive mitral valve surgery have come out on top. Read More
South San Francisco-based Pliant Therapeutics Inc. CEO Bernard Coulie told BioWorld that Novartis AG was drawn to the $80 million deal in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) because other firms working in the integrin space "are very much focused on early stages of the disease, with what we call a metabolic approach. We are addressing with our compound, which is a pure antifibrotic, the late stage of the disease, [categorized as] F3 and F4, where most of the liver is already gone. We think that the real market will be there, because that's where health care costs go up" and where patients facing an increased mortality rate "need proper treatment rather than changing their lifestyle" while using something milder. Read More
Building on the positive phase II results reported in June 2018 for pamrevlumab to treat pancreatic cancer, the first dose has been administered in Fibrogen Inc.'s phase III study in patients with unresectable locally advanced pancreatic cancer. Read More
SAN FRANCISCO – At what BIO CEO and President Jim Greenwood called a "Dickensian moment in the history of biotechnology – arguably the best of times and the worst of times" for U.S. industry players, new rules piloted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) have made things even more challenging. Confusion about CFIUS has led to a decline in Chinese venture capital investment in U.S. biotech and, at some firms, even a pause in cross-border investment as they wait for the dust to clear, experts said. Read More
SAN FRANCISCO – Investor sentiment around Biogen Inc.'s plan to soon seek approval for aducanumab in Alzheimer's disease yielded a clear bold reaction in its rising share price Tuesday. But a more nuanced reading was floated during a CNS panel at the BIO Investor Forum the day after, where a focus on new modalities and a call for open-mindedness carried the conversation. "It almost doesn't matter what investors think," said Ellen Lubman, a panelist and chief business officer of Impel Neuropharma Inc. "The reality is that if truly there's a percentage of people getting a benefit from the drug... that's the reason we're all in this business." Read More
Australian scientists have discovered promising new candidate analgesic molecules derived from a Penicillium fungus, which represents a promising resource for the development of safer new analgesics, they reported in the Oct. 14, 2019, edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Read More
BEIJING – Hightide Therapeutics Inc., of Shenzhen, China, and Rockville, Md., said it finished the enrollment in phase IIa trials for its lead asset, HTD-1801, which is a potential first-in-class new molecular entity for primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Read More
HONG KONG – South Korea's major pharmaceutical company GC Pharma Corp., based in Yong-in, Gyeonggi-do, and the Cambridge, Mass.-based U.S. biotech Vaxess Technologies Inc., have partnered to globally commercialize a flu vaccine patch based on Vaxess' Mimix Smart Release Patch technology. The patch is designed to deliver medicines and vaccines through silk microneedles that dissolve at a precise rate. Read More
