Company News

The UK specialty pharmaceutical company BTG Plc reported a 24.3% increase in revenue for the fiscal year ended 31 March to £290.5 million with slightly more than 88% of this figure generated in the US.

In an interim management statement, Skyepharma Plc said its financial position has improved after it recently paid off £95.6 million pounds of bond debt thereby cutting its debt service payments by £8.1 million in 2014 and £13.3 million in 2015. Its remaining debt is only £4.8 million.

Alere Inc of the US,  a provider of point-of-care diagnostics for chronic disease, is shedding some of its non-core assets by spinning them off into a newly formed company that is to be listed on the London Stock Exchange.

AstraZeneca Plc has rejected a sweetened takeover proposal from Pfizer Inc that values the company at £55 per share saying that the offer falls short of the company’s value as an “independent science-led company.”

Kymab Ltd of Cambridge UK has raised $40 million in a Series B financing round from its existing investor the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Both institutions are investing $20 million each.

Horizon Discovery Group Plc, a UK service company, has agreed to acquire the combination high throughput screening business of Zalicus Inc of Cambridge, Massachusetts, bolstering its portfolio of research tools for the pharmaceutical industry.

Shire Plc has made its third move this year to strengthen its portfolio of rare disease medicines with the acquisition of San Diego-based Lumena Pharmaceuticals Inc which has two candidate compounds in clinical development for rare liver diseases.

AstraZeneca PLC has entered into a research agreement with the Tianjin Medical University in China to investigate the causes of cardiac fibrosis, a condition that can lead to heart failure. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc has reported the failure of a second Phase 3 trial of its candidate medicine for acute coronary syndrome darapladib. In the study the compound did not achieve the primary endpoint of reducing major coronary events compared with placebo and the standard of care.

An antiviral agent intended to prevent cytomegalovirus infections in patients receiving bone marrow transplants, has been highlighted in a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. The compound, letermovir, originated at AiCuris GmbH & Co of Germany.