News

France-based Innate Pharma SA said data from a Phase 1 study of its antibody lirilumab administered with nivolumab to patients with refractory solid tumours, showed a similar safety profile to that of nivolumab alone. The data were presented on 9 October at ESMO.

A study by clinicians at the Universities of Leuven and Ghent in Belgium, together with the University of Oxford, has shown that better use of a point-of-care diagnostic can help general practitioners determine which children need hospitalisation because of a serious disease and which can remain at home.

Researchers at Vienna’s Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) and the Max F Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) have discovered a new mechanism for unleashing the immune system to kill fungal pathogens. Their research was published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Sanofi SA has received a second multi-million dollar contract from the US government’s biomedical advanced research and development authority (BARDA) for research into new medicinal products  – this time for a product to treat acute radiation syndrome in the event of a public health emergency.

Newron Pharmaceuticals SpA, an Italian biotech with a Zurich listing, has raised CHF 26.1 million (€23.8 million) with a private equity placement, which will help cover marketing and research and development costs through 2018.

Alnylam Pharmaceutials Inc, the world’s leading developer of therapies based on RNA interference (RNAi) , has stopped development of revusiran, a treatment for a hereditary amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy, a condition caused by the abnormal accumulation of amyloid proteins in the body.

A collaborative research project between scientists at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Karus Therapeutics Ltd, a venture capital-backed company in the UK, has yielded a candidate drug inhibiting P13K, a target of growing interest to the pharmaceutical industry.

Yoshinori Ohsumi, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in discovering and elucidating the mechanisms underlying autophagy, a process by which the cell can degrade and recycle its own contents.

AstraZeneca Plc’s anti-platelet agent Brilinta (ticagrelor) has failed to show a significant benefit over Plavix in a Phase 3 study of patients with symptomatic peripheral artery disease (PAD) – the second trial failure this year for the drug.

Citing competitive pressures in the US, Novo Nordisk A/S has announced plans to reduce its workforce by about 1,000 employees – or 2.4% of its global staff of 42,300 persons. The measures do not alter the company’s forecast for 2016 which calls for increases in sales and operating profit.