Company News

The Helsinn Group has joined the growing number of pharmaceutical companies that have decided to support early stage life science with a dedicated investment fund – the Helsinn Investment Fund SA.

UK-based Crescendo Biologics Ltd has secured its first commercial deal since its founding in 2007 with the signing of a collaboration and license option agreement with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. The deal concerns several preclinical drug candidates that have been derived from the VH antibody domains of transgenic mice.

Patients with head and neck cancer who were treated with nivolumab experienced a better quality of life than those treated with chemotherapy, according to an outcomes study released on 9 October at the European Society for Medical Oncology congress in Copenhagen.

France-based Innate Pharma SA said data from a Phase 1 study of its antibody lirilumab administered with nivolumab to patients with refractory solid tumours, showed a similar safety profile to that of nivolumab alone. The data were presented on 9 October at ESMO.

Sanofi SA has received a second multi-million dollar contract from the US government’s biomedical advanced research and development authority (BARDA) for research into new medicinal products  – this time for a product to treat acute radiation syndrome in the event of a public health emergency.

Newron Pharmaceuticals SpA, an Italian biotech with a Zurich listing, has raised CHF 26.1 million (€23.8 million) with a private equity placement, which will help cover marketing and research and development costs through 2018.

Alnylam Pharmaceutials Inc, the world’s leading developer of therapies based on RNA interference (RNAi) , has stopped development of revusiran, a treatment for a hereditary amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy, a condition caused by the abnormal accumulation of amyloid proteins in the body.

A collaborative research project between scientists at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Karus Therapeutics Ltd, a venture capital-backed company in the UK, has yielded a candidate drug inhibiting P13K, a target of growing interest to the pharmaceutical industry.

AstraZeneca Plc’s anti-platelet agent Brilinta (ticagrelor) has failed to show a significant benefit over Plavix in a Phase 3 study of patients with symptomatic peripheral artery disease (PAD) – the second trial failure this year for the drug.

Citing competitive pressures in the US, Novo Nordisk A/S has announced plans to reduce its workforce by about 1,000 employees – or 2.4% of its global staff of 42,300 persons. The measures do not alter the company’s forecast for 2016 which calls for increases in sales and operating profit.