Kymab Ltd of Cambridge UK has raised $40 million in a Series B financing round from its existing investor the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Both institutions are investing $20 million each.
Horizon Discovery Group Plc, a UK service company, has agreed to acquire the combination high throughput screening business of Zalicus Inc of Cambridge, Massachusetts, bolstering its portfolio of research tools for the pharmaceutical industry.
Shire Plc has made its third move this year to strengthen its portfolio of rare disease medicines with the acquisition of San Diego-based Lumena Pharmaceuticals Inc which has two candidate compounds in clinical development for rare liver diseases.
AstraZeneca PLC has entered into a research agreement with the Tianjin Medical University in China to investigate the causes of cardiac fibrosis, a condition that can lead to heart failure. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc has reported the failure of a second Phase 3 trial of its candidate medicine for acute coronary syndrome darapladib. In the study the compound did not achieve the primary endpoint of reducing major coronary events compared with placebo and the standard of care.
An antiviral agent intended to prevent cytomegalovirus infections in patients receiving bone marrow transplants, has been highlighted in a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. The compound, letermovir, originated at AiCuris GmbH & Co of Germany.
In the latest asset shuffle amongst Big Pharma companies, Merck & Co Inc has announced the sale of its consumer care business to Bayer AG for $14.2 billion. It will invest the proceeds into new assets including its checkpoint inhibitor MK-3475.
A US-based research team has created the first patient-specific stem cells from an adult donor with Type 1 diabetes, and a healthy control, demonstrating that it may one day be possible to treat people with the disease with their own insulin-producing cells.
Merck & Co Inc said that is suspending a Phase 3 study of the experimental treatment vintafolide for platinum-resistant ovarian cancer on advice from the trial’s data safety monitoring board because the product didn’t show efficacy for progression-free survival.
After a meeting of its board of directors this morning, AstraZeneca Plc has issued a statement rejecting Pfizer Inc’s proposed cash and share takeover offer valued at £64 billion. The UK company described the financial and other terms as inadequate.