Delegates convening in San Francisco Monday for the 38th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference and other related biotechnology conferences running at the same time will certainly be in a better frame of mind than just 12 months ago. Back then, the sector had just come off a terrible fourth quarter, with investors shying away from biopharma company equities big time. Read More
As the industry looks forward to 2020 at the 38th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference next week, BioWorld is looking backward to those we lost in the past year. Read More
Eli Lilly and Co.’s acquisition of Dermira Inc. for $1.1 billion in cash enlarges Lilly’s dermatology pipeline with the addition of lebrikizumab, a monoclonal antibody designed to bind IL-13 with high affinity, now in two phase III studies for treating moderate to severe atopic dermatitis (AD) in adolescent and adult patients, ages 12 and older. Read More
California's Amunix Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Roche Holding AG has agreed to license its therapeutic half-life extension technology, XTEN, for an effort to discover and develop new non-oncology therapies. The deal, which includes $40 million up front, plus up to $1.5 billion in development and sales milestones, builds on a previous technology evaluation agreement the companies first inked in 2013. Read More
As regular as clockwork, U.S. patients were hit with a spate of price hikes on prescription drugs last week – even as they were faced with once again having to meet their hefty annual deductibles. Read More
Cambridge, Mass.-based Blueprint Medicines Corp.’s price tag and label for Ayvakit (avapritinib) caused some chagrin on Wall Street as observers continued to weigh the drug’s odds against ripretinib, the competing drug for which Deciphera Pharmaceuticals Inc. awaits regulatory action. Read More
The prospects for Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc.'s adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene therapy, DTX-301, in patients with ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) deficiency weren't looking too great after treatment of the first two cohorts in a phase I/II study. Read More
How organisms age, and what determines their lifespan, is one of the basic questions of biology. It is also a major area of biopharmaceutical interest. Partly, this is because most people want to delay shuffling off this mortal coil for as long as possible. Read More
NBE Therapeutics AG raised $22 million in a series C round to take its first antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), NBE-002, into the clinic. NBE-002, which targets receptor tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptor 1 (ROR1), is in development for both solid tumors and lymphomas Read More
BEIJING – China-U.S. biotech Transcenta Holding Ltd., headquartered in Shanghai and Boston, completed a series B+ financing round to secure $100 million to continue its efforts in developing oncology and bone disorder drugs and to prepare for an IPO. Read More
A University of California, San Diego-led team from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative has reported that in long-term imaging studies, objective subtle cognitive deficits (obj-SCD) preceded amyloid deposition in longitudinal imaging studies. Read More
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations. Read More