TOKYO – Biopharmaceutical companies look to benefit, at least in the short term, after Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe put off a planned 2 percent consumption tax hike scheduled for 2017. The increase now will not be introduced until at least October 2019. Read More

Mesoblast Ltd. lost more than a third of its market value last week as Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. returned full development and commercialization rights to its advanced chronic heart failure therapy, MPC-150-IM. Mesoblast CEO Silviu Itescu sought to cast the return as "a major win" for the company, simultaneously announcing a equity financing facility that will fund the program through completion. Read More

MMJ Phytotech Ltd., of Nedlands, Australia, appointed Stanislav Sologubov CEO and John Hollister strategic pharmaceutical consultant. Sologubov will be focused on accelerating sales of Satipharm's medical cannabis consumer health products in Europe. He is an international sales and marketing expert with more than 15 years' experience working with global health care companies including Johnson & Johnson and Bausch + Lomb. Read More

Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp., of Osaka, Japan, said it submitted a new drug application to the FDA for MCI-186, edaravone, to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Mitsubishi Tanabe also said that it has established a U.S. company, MT Pharma America Inc., to commercialize products in the U.S. and is planning to expand that company's product line through various collaborations. Read More

HONG KONG – New research has identified a targetable new pathway in a proposed cell-of-origin population in breast cancer-susceptible BRCA1 gene mutation carriers, implicating RANKL blockade as a promising strategy for the prevention of breast cancer. Read More

SHANGHAI – Innovent Biologics Inc., an antibody-focused company based in Suzhou, is betting that the best things will come in pairs. The Chinese biopharma signed its second deal with Adimab LLC, an antibody developer based in Lebanon, N.H., this time for bispecifics. Moreover, this is Innovent's second bispecifics agreement in the span of a week, having also inked a $120 million deal with local start-up, Epimab Biotherapeutics Inc., for its DNA-based approach to bispecifics. Read More

HONG KONG – With a green light from the CFDA, Taiwan antibiotics maker Taigen Biotechnology Co. Ltd. now has the first made-in-Taiwan novel drug marketed in mainland China. Read More