Company News

An indirect affiliate of Johnson & Johnson Inc, Cilag GmbH International of Zug, Switzerland, has acquired Covagen AG from Covagen’s venture capital and other private investors for an undisclosed amount.

The Roche Group is to acquire InterMune Inc of the US for $8.3 billion in cash in order to gain access to that company’s respiratory portfolio that includes a marketed product for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The deal has been approved by the boards of both companies.

UniQure NV of the Netherlands, the first company in the western world to market a licensed gene therapy, has expanded its portfolio with the acquisition of a German biotechnology company with a preclinical product for the treatment of congestive heart failure.

A protein that plays a key role in the blood stage of the malaria parasite has been described by scientists from the University of Oxford, the Jenner Institute and the Denmark-based contract research organisation Expres2ion Biotechnologies. The findings were published online in the journal Nature.

MorphoSys AG has broadened its portfolio of oncology assets with an agreement to in-license a candidate bispecific antibody targeting prostate cancer, one of the most common cancers in men. The deal, with Emergent BioSolutions Inc of the US, involves the co-development and commercialisation of a preclinical asset that has shown potential to activate T cell immunity against prostate cancer cells expressing prostate specific membrane antigen.

Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd, a developer of treatments for infectious diseases and cancer, reported its first-half results for 2014 which showed a small decline in revenue and a widening of its net loss.

Two members of the supervisory board of 4SC AG, the German biotechnology company, have announced their intentions to resign effective 18 September.

Skyepharma Plc has purchased rights to a respiratory technology platform from Pulmagen Therapeutics (Synergy) Ltd that could form the basis of a range of new products for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of Avastin (bevacizumab) with chemotherapy to treat advanced cervical cancer – the first biologic to be authorised for this indication in combination with other agents.

A Phase 3 trial of the cancer drug Kyprolis administered as a single agent for patients with refractory multiple myeloma has failed to meet its endpoint of improving overall survival. This follows another study of the same drug in combination with two other agents that was positive.