Who would have thought it? An offering of 34 million shares of the Dutch contract manufacturing organisation Patheon NV raised a nominal $718.7 million at a price of $21 per share on the New York Stock Exchange in late July. Not only did institutional investors like the stock, they must have thought it was a fancy growth company – a super Crispr or perhaps an ultra CAR T Naamloze Vennootschap.
Reporting its first results since acquiring Baxalta Inc on 3 June, Shire Plc said that second quarter revenue rose by 56% to $2.43 billion while operating profit shrunk by 27% to $96.2 million, partly because of integration charges and higher amortisations.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc has deepened its commitment to the field of bioelectronic medicine with plans to set up a joint-venture company to develop implantable devices for chronic diseases. GSK will own 55% of the company Galvani Bioelectronics Ltd while Verily Life Sciences LLC will hold 45%.
MorphoSys AG said it expects an operating loss and sharply lower revenue this year but investment in research and development will increase in response to promising data from its early-stage antibody therapeutics.
Sanofi SA reported a double-digit increase in sales for rare disease and multiple sclerosis products in the second quarter. But this was not enough to offset a revenue decline for diabetes products, the company’s biggest franchise.
AstraZeneca Plc has confirmed that it is on course to return to growth by 2018 as income from new medicines overtakes losses from products that have come off patent in recent years. This year the company will be hardest hit by revenue losses from Crestor, the cholesterol medicine.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc is to invest £275 million in three manufacturing sites in the UK to support rising demand for its respiratory and biologic medicines. The decision was disclosed just ahead of the company’s second-quarter earnings announcement which saw sales rise for its three main businesses
Scientists from the Swiss antibody company Humabs BioMed SA have characterised the human immune response to infection from the Zika virus and shown for the first time that antibodies derived from infected patients may not only be useful for developing diagnostics and therapies, but also answer the question of why Zika infections can become more dangerous if a person is infected with Dengue fever later in life.
An established antiviral medicine that has been on the market in Europe since 2005 to treat people with HIV-1 is being recommended for disease prevention as well. Truvada, which contains the active substances emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil, has received a positive opinion from the European Medicines Agency for use as pre-exposure prophylaxis, together with safer sex practices.
A new drug for glaucoma developed by Nicox SA of France and licensed to a unit of Valeant Pharmaceuticals has been rejected by the US Food and Drug Administration because of deficiencies at the company’s Florida manufacturing plant.