The Anglo/Russian pharmaceutical company, Pro Bono Bio Group Plc, has reported promising pre-clinical data for a new group of haemophilia products that would act longer than existing blood factor proteins thereby enabling patients to self-administer treatments at home. The preclinical data still must be confirmed in human trials and approved by a regulator before any products could be marketed.
AstraZeneca Plc and the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US have announced a collaboration to identify new chemical compounds targeting bacterial and viral infections. Financial details were not disclosed.
SV Life Sciences and Novo A/S are among the four new investors supporting a Series B financing round for Karus Therapeutics Ltd of the UK. The investors have thus far committed $7.6 million to support programmes in inflammation and cancer.
Eli Lilly and Company said that a Phase 3 trial (Pointbreak) of a combination treatment for patients with nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer has failed to meet its primary endpoint of improved overall survival.
Privately-owned Symphogen A/S of Denmark is set to receive €20 million upfront from Merck Serono in exchange for rights to the Symphogen monoclonal antibody, Sym004, which is being developed for metastatic colorectal cancer.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Bosulif (bosutinib) a new tyrosine kinase inhibitor from Pfizer Inc for the treatment chronic myelogenous leukaemia (CML) in patients who are resistant to other therapies including imatinib.
Theravectys SAS of France, which is developing vaccines based on lentiviral vector technology, has secured €7.48 million from a group of private French investors. The new funds will help the company develop a candidate therapeutic vaccine for HIV.
Merck Serono SA is spinning out a second new enterprise in connection with the closure of its Geneva, Switzerland office – this time focused on bioinformatics. The new company, Quartz Bio SA, will offer biomarker analysis services to the pharma industry.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new androgen receptor inhibitor, Xtandi (enzalutamide), for patients with late-stage castration-resistant prostate cancer who had previously been treated with docetaxel. Xtandi was given a priority review.
On the heels of a successful share placement in July, Oxford BioMedica Plc is moving its gene therapy and cancer vaccine programmes ahead with a near-term focus on completing the dosing of patients in a Phase 1 study of a gene therapy for ‘wet’ age-related macular degeneration (AMD).