Bavarian Nordic A/S has reorganised its vaccine business into two divisions and consolidated its management in order to deliver on two near-term targets: secure new US orders for its smallpox vaccine and advance its prostate cancer vaccine to Phase 3.
Privately-owned Okairos AG of Switzerland has raised €16 million in a Series B financing round to support development of its portfolio of T-cell vaccines against a range of infectious diseases. The round was led by Versant Ventures of the US.
In separate announcements, AstraZeneca Plc and Pfizer Inc said that trials of their respective treatments for prostate cancer, zibotentan and sunitinib malate, failed to show efficacy at Phase 3. Neither study threw up any unexpected safety issues.
Sanofi Pasteur will pay $55 million upfront to acquire privately-owned, VaxDesign, which develops in vitro models of the human immune system. There is an additional $5 million payment linked to the achievement of certain, undisclosed goals.
The two-year-old Netherlands-based company, arGEN-X BV, has received a €1.5 million grant to accelerate preclinical development of an antibody that targets interleukin 6 (IL-6), a cytokine that plays a role in autoimmune indications.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new combination oral contraceptive from Bayer Schering Pharma AG that contains a folate (levomefolate calcium), in order to protect against neural tube defects during a pregnancy.
The European Medicines Agency has refused to grant a marketing authorisation for Merck Serono’s new small molecule drug for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, Movectro (cladribine), citing concerns about the medicine’s safety.
Sanofi-Aventis SA has agreed to pay $33 million upfront to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts for access to its oncology research. Sanofi will be working with Dana-Farber’s Belfer Institute of Applied Cancer Science.
AstraZeneca Plc said its candidate drug for thyroid cancer, vandetanib, has been given priority review status by the US Food and Drug Administration which means a decision on marketing should be taken in six months instead of the usual ten.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Gilenya (fingolimod), Novartis’s oral, first-line treatment for relapsing multiple sclerosis. It is the first oral therapy for relapsing forms of MS to be approved in the US, the company said.