News

MorphoSys AG said it expects an operating loss and sharply lower revenue this year but investment in research and development will increase in response to promising data from its early-stage antibody therapeutics.

Sanofi SA reported a double-digit increase in sales for rare disease and multiple sclerosis products in the second quarter. But this was not enough to offset a revenue decline for diabetes products, the company’s biggest franchise.

AstraZeneca Plc has confirmed that it is on course to return to growth by 2018 as income from new medicines overtakes losses from products that have come off patent in recent years. This year the company will be hardest hit by revenue losses from Crestor, the cholesterol medicine.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc is to invest £275 million in three manufacturing sites in the UK to support rising demand for its respiratory and biologic medicines. The decision was disclosed just ahead of the company’s second-quarter earnings announcement which saw sales rise for its three main businesses

Scientists from the Swiss antibody company Humabs BioMed SA have characterised the human immune response to infection from the Zika virus and shown for the first time that antibodies derived from infected patients may not only be useful for developing diagnostics and therapies, but also answer the question of why Zika infections can become more dangerous if a person is infected with Dengue fever later in life.

An established antiviral medicine that has been on the market in Europe since 2005 to treat people with HIV-1 is being recommended for disease prevention as well. Truvada, which contains the active substances emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil, has received a positive opinion from the European Medicines Agency for use as pre-exposure prophylaxis, together with safer sex practices.

A new drug for glaucoma developed by Nicox SA of France and licensed to a unit of Valeant Pharmaceuticals has been rejected by the US Food and Drug Administration because of deficiencies at the company’s Florida manufacturing plant.

Celgene Corp, which only a year ago entered a 10-year collaboration with Juno Therapeutics, has now invested in Jounce Therapeutics Inc which has different technology for stimulating the immune system to fight cancer.

Juno Therapeutics Inc has acquired a Boston, Massachusetts, US biotech company with technology that can potentially disrupt immunosuppressive pathways in the tumour microenvironment of certain cancers. This fits in with its technology for engineering T cells to fight cancer.

An international research consortium that is working on a promising antibody for the treatment of influenza has had its work published in the 14 July edition of the journal Cell. The research suggests that the antibody has the potential for treating influenza caused by numerous type A strains.