Company News

The fall-out from an alleged fiddle of Type 1 diabetes research by an Israeli company has spread to California and then on to Germany.

Results of a Phase 2 study of benralizumab from AstraZeneca Plc for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have been published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. The drug is said to be the first biologic to show a marked reduction in  inflammation.

Biocartis NV, a Belgian developer of molecular diagnostics, has raised €64.5 million in equity finance to support the commercialisation of its Idylla diagnostic system.

The US Food and Drug Administration has issued its first approval for a checkpoint inhibitor that targets the T cell receptor programmed death 1 or PD-1 for the treatment of advanced melanoma. The drug, Keytruda (pembrolizumab), was developed by Merck & Co Inc.

 In keeping with the trend among European biotechs to finance themselves in the US, Ablynx NV of Belgium has started an open-ended programme of selling its shares on the US over-the-counter market through the creation of American Depository Receipts (ADRs).

Bavarian Nordic A/S announced that its contract with the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) for the supply of smallpox vaccine has been renewed for a second time.

In the latest of a series of single asset deals among biopharma firms, AbbVie Inc has agreed to pay up to $805 million for rights to a mid-stage cancer drug being developed by Infinity Pharmaceuticals Inc with potential applications in a broad range of blood cancers.

The European Commission has granted a marketing authorisation for a new treatment for HIV, Triumeq, that combines the integrase strand transfer inhibitor dolutegravir with the nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors abacavir and lamivudine.

Affimed Therapeutics AG, which is in the queue to make an initial public offering of its shares in the US, has in the meantime obtained $29.7 million from its venture investors and Perceptive Advisors LLC of New York City.

Novo Nordisk A/S said it is discontinuing its research into inflammatory diseases following the termination of its anti-interleukin-20 treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, which was its most advanced drug candidate in the field.