Novartis has negotiated commercialisation rights outside the US to Luxturna (voretigene neparvovec-rzyl) – the first gene therapy to be approved in the US for an inherited retinal disease. The therapy was developed by Spark Therapeutics Inc which retains US rights to the drug.
Norgine Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of the specialty pharma company Norgine NV, has announced a €4.5 million investment in a Spanish company with wireless medical device technologies.
Celgene Corp is to acquire Juno Therapeutics Inc for $9 billion in an agreed merger that will give the New Jersey, US-based company a stake in the market for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies for cancer, currently dominated by Novartis and Gilead Sciences Inc.
Sanofi SA has announced plans to pay $11.6 billion to acquire Bioverativ Inc of Waltham, Massachusetts, US in order to enhance its position in specialty care. Bioverativ has two marketed products for haemophilia A and B.
Among the technologies in development to treat cancer, ex-vivo gene therapy has gained the most traction in the past 12 months. This follows regulatory approvals for therapies from Novartis and Gilead Sciences Inc where cells are extracted from a patient, treated in a laboratory and reinfused back into the patient.
UK-based Abcam Plc has gained exclusive rights to a portfolio of laboratory tools from Roche giving it a new source of recombinant antibodies for use by its customers in research. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Avacta Group Plc, which has developed a new protein technology for therapeutics, has announced a drug development partnership with Glythera Ltd, a UK developer of antibody drug conjugates (ADC). The goal is to develop ADC drugs for patient care.
Novo Nordisk A/S disclosed on 8 January that it has made a second unsolicited bid for Ablynx NV – this time for €2.6 billion.The Ablynx board has responded saying that the proposal "fundamentally undervalues the company and its future."
The prospect of being able to re-dose a gene therapy has come into the fore with the launch on 4 January of Generation Bio Inc, a company with technology for delivering DNA directly to the liver using lipid nanoparticles rather than a viral vector.
CureVac AG has expanded its therapeutic reach to include projects targeting genetic diseases in addition to its portfolio of candidate drugs for cancer and infectious disease. This follows an agreement with Arcturus Therapeutics Ltd to develop a product to treat ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) deficiency.