News

Novartis initiated a major change in strategy in 2018 under the leadership of Vas Narasimhan, who became chief executive a year ago. The company sold its consumer products business and took steps to divest the Alcon eye division. At the same time it invested heavily in gene therapy and moved into radiopharmaceuticals.

The strategy change was mainly reflected in the company’s operating income for the year which fell by 5% to $8.2 billion due to restructuring and takeovers costs.

Sphere Fluidics Ltd has raised $2 million from investors to accelerate growth and support the sales of its single cell analysis system which is used to recognise biological targets and improve antibody discovery.

The funds were provided by Greenwood Way Capital, Oxford Technology and Innovations EIS Fund and 24Haymarket.

Sphere Fluidics is located in Babraham, Cambridgeshire, UK and Monmouth Junction, New Jersey, US.

The company announced the funding on 29 January 2019.

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The US Food and Drug Administration has given ‘fast track’ status to a prospective antibody treatment wholly-owned by Innate Pharma SA for the treatment of Sézary syndrome, an aggressive form of cutaneous T cell lymphoma.

A fast track designation enables the developers of promising drugs the opportunity for an expedited review. In this case the drug, IPH4102, produced favourable Phase 1 data in adult patients who had relapsed after receiving at least two prior therapies.

A US district court has ruled against MorphoSys AG in a patent infringement suit that the Germany company brought against Genmab A/S and its partner Janssen Biotech Inc relating to Darzalex (daratumumab), their marketed drug for multiple myeloma.

The decision, by the District Court of Delaware, means that MorphoSys’ claims for damage have been rejected and its three US patents for a similar drug have been declared invalid.

The Belgian molecular diagnostics company Biocartis Group NV has raised €55.5 million in a private share placement to support the commercialisation of its molecular diagnostics, particularly for the detection of cancer.

The company’s diagnostics platform uses a real-time polymerase chain reaction system to derive information from biological samples in a wide variety of settings. The company is expanding in oncology and currently has tests supporting the detection of melanoma and colorectal and lung cancers.

BioNTech AG is to expand its drug discovery capabilities following an agreement with MAB Discovery GmbH to acquire that company’s antibody generation unit. The two companies, both based in Germany, have been collaborating since 2013. Financial terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed.

UK-based Autifony Therapeutics Ltd has achieved a first milestone under an option agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, triggering an undisclosed payment for work on small molecule potassium channel modulators for the treatment of central nervous system disorders.

Philip Hampton, non-executive chairman of GlaxoSmithKline Plc since May 2015, has decided to step down from the position, triggering the start of recruitment for a successor, GSK announced on 21 January 2019.

Mr Hampton’s departure comes nearly two years after the appointment of Emma Walmsley as chief executive, and the recently announced restructuring that will see GSK spin out an enlarged consumer healthcare business into a separately listed company. This restructuring is expected to take place over the next three years.

Nanobiotix SA has announced plans to make a public offering of its shares in the US with the submission of a registration statement Form F-1 to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The timing and size of the issue haven’t been decided.

A team of scientists at the VIB research institute and KU Leuven in Belgium has discovered that an amyloid-beta precursor protein, APP, modulates neuronal signal transmission by binding to a specific receptor called GABA_BR1a. This has implications for treating Alzheimer’s disease and probably other disorders.

Alzheimer’s-affected brains are clogged with amyloid-beta plaques. These fragments are produced from a precursor protein whose normal function has remained unclear for decades.