Zealand Pharma A/S of Denmark said that revenue, plus other operating income, amounted to DKK 170.7 million (€23 million) in 2011, about double the DKK 88.2 million (€11.9 million) earned a year earlier. Income mainly came from alliances.
A Norwegian start-up company,Targovax AS, has raised NOK 13 million (€1.7 million) in a Series A financing round to support the clinical development of a therapeutic vaccine against pancreatic cancer. The candidate product is a peptide vaccine that targets mutations on ras genes.
Citing the need to make further productivity gains, AstraZeneca Plc has announced plans to eliminate 7,300 jobs by the end of 2014 or about 12% of its 60,000-strong workforce. Of this number, 2,200 positions will be taken from research and development. This is the third company-wide restructuring programme since 2007 which altogether will see the loss of 28,900 jobs and yield annual savings estimated at $5.9 billion by the end of 2014.
Wilex AG, which has an antibody treatment for renal cell cancer in a pivotal Stage 3 trial along with a companion diagnostic, has successfully completed a €9.93 million rights issue. Wilex is based in Munich, Germany.
Roche delivered on its earnings targets for 2011, reporting an 11% increase in core earnings per share for the year, and a rise in net income, expressed in Swiss francs, of 7%. The company is proposing to raise its dividend by 3% to CHF 6.80 per share.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved an expansion of the approved use of Gleevec (imatinib) to increase the time during which the drug is effective in patients with CD117-positive gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GIST). The developer of the drug is Novartis.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new personalised medicine, Kalydeco (ivacaftor), for a rare form of cystic fibrosis, the first treatment to target a mutation in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator (CFTR) gene.
Venture-capital backed Domain Therapeutics SA of France has received a grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation to develop allosteric modulators for Parkinson’s disease. This follows a year-earlier licensing deal with Merck Serono, also for PD.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a skin cancer drug from Roche, Erivedge (vismodegib), its first ever approval of a treatment for metastatic basal cell carcinoma. Erivedge works by inhibiting the Hedgehog pathway.
In an apparently unprecedented situation, a committee of the European Union member states which advises the European Commission on the granting or refusal of marketing authorisations, has reached an impasse over the gene therapy, Glybera.