Novo Nordisk A/S, one of the world’s largest producers of diabetes products, reported a 25% increase in net sales for the first half of 2015 and a 57% rise in operating profit but much of the gain resulted from a higher value for the dollar.
CureVac GmbH is to start a third project with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this time to develop a vaccine to protect against respiratory syncytial virus. The partners are already working on vaccines against HIV and rotavirus.
UCB SA reported sharply higher revenue and profit for the first half-year, buoyed by favourable exchange rates and sharply higher sales for a trio of drugs for neurological and inflammatory diseases. Revenue was up by 21% to €1.92 billion while operating profit rose by 173% to €415 million.
A team of scientists using technology from the Swiss company Humabs BioMed SA has isolated an antibody from a patient infected with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus, which has been found to be effective in mice. The findings were reported by Davide Corti, Humabs’ chief scientific officer, and colleagues on 27 July in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Interim results from a Phase 3 trial in Guinea of a candidate vaccine against the Ebola virus have shown the agent to be safe and effective within six to 10 days of vaccination. The trial data were announced by Merck & Co Inc and published online in The Lancet on 31 July.
Shire Plc is set to pay $300 million to acquire privately-held Foresight Biotherapeutics Inc which has a late-stage candidate drug for infectious conjunctivitis which is under investigation for both viral and bacterial forms of the disease.
Shire Plc has made an unsolicited offer valued at about $30 billion to acquire a recent spinout from Baxter International Inc which potentially could double Shire’s revenue.
Ipsen SA reported consolidated revenue of €751.9 million for the first-half year, up by 12.4% from a year earlier, but its operating income slumped by 29.3% to €103.4 million largely because of the higher cost of sales.
A new company has been set up in the UK to acquire clinical assets that large pharma companies may not be in a position to develop further. The first programmes acquired by Mereo BioPharma Group Ltd are three mid-stage clinical assets from Novartis.
Sanofi SA reported revenue of €9.4 billion in the 2015 second quarter, up by 16.1% on a reported basis, driven in part by sales from its Genzyme unit and a strengthening of the dollar against the euro. At constant exchange rates, the increase was 4.9%.