UCB SA, a Belgian company developing an antibody targeting a toxic protein tied to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), said Roche Holding AG has negotiated an exclusive global license to the potential therapy for $120 million up front, plus almost $2 billion in milestone payments following positive proof of concept for the anti-tau candidate, UCB-0107, in AD. Read More
Nura Bio Inc., a company working to discover and develop new neuroprotective medicines, has closed a $73 million series A financing that President and CEO Alpna Seth said would help her team advance a multitarget pipeline, initially led by an inhibitor of the sterile alpha TIR motif protein 1 inhibitor (SARM1). Read More
Mantra Bio Inc., of San Francisco, plans to take its new $25 million series A financing and advance its pipeline and partnering efforts for engineering targeted exosome vehicles. The company platform integrates computational approaches, wet biology and robotics to leverage exosome diversity and enable rational design of therapeutics for a range of tissue and cellular targets. Read More
Like many companies, New York-based Abeona Therapeutics Inc. faltered clinically as a result of the COVID-19 virus, which delayed enrollment in the phase III study with EB-101 gene therapy in recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB), but the company earlier this month disclosed the restart of patient enrollment in the experiment called Viital. Read More
Researchers from the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) consortium reported data from the third phase of the project. Phase III data, which were published in more than a dozen papers in Nature and its sister journals on July 29, 2020, consisted of 6,000 experiments performed on around 1,300 samples. Read More
Senhwa Biosciences Inc., of Taipei, Taiwan, said casein kinase 2 (CK2) is the right target to aim at when developing a COVID-19 therapeutic treatment. The company’s silmitasertib is the only clinical-stage inhibitor of CK2, a kinase recently identified by researchers as being hijacked by SARS-CoV-2. Read More
PERTH, Australia – Melbourne-based Dimerix Ltd.’s stock shot up nearly 20% on the news that its lead compound, DMX-200, met primary and secondary endpoints in a phase IIa trial in patients with rare kidney disease focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), according to top-line results. Read More
Clinical updates, including trial initiations, enrollment status and data readouts and publications: Abbvie, Auris, Constant, Denali, Dimerix, Genentech, Krystal, Repare, Samus, Sanofi. Read More
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Emmaus, Inovio, Melt, Merck, Novartis, Regulus, Relief, Ridgeback, Roche, Scynexis, Teva. Read More
