AstraZeneca Plc is to pay $125 million upfront for two drug development programmes that address opioid-induced constipation. The payments are part of its exclusive licensing agreement with the US-based Nektar Therapeutics.
An international team of scientists has reported finding four new single-letter variations in the sequence of the human genome which confers an increased risk of prostate cancer. The findings were published online in Nature Genetics.
The Wellcome Trust and Merck & Co have created a social business to develop affordable vaccines for diseases prevalent in low-income countries.
A new compound has been identified that could play a role in treating cancers that are dependent on a complex network of proteins known as the Wnt signalling pathway. The findings were reported in the science journal, Nature.
Bayer AG has appointed a professional from outside the company as its chief-executive-officer designate to replace Werner Wenning who is retiring. Marijn Dekkers, the new CEO, currently heads Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.
Johnson & Johnson will pay less money for an equity stake in Elan Corporation Plc after a US court ruled that a proposed partnership between the two companies was in conflict with a separate collaboration between Elan and Biogen Idec.
A venture capital-backed antibody company called Argen-x BV has raised €9.5 million in a Series A financing round from a syndicate of investors, co-led by Forbion Capital Partners and Life Sciences Partners, both of the Netherlands.
Regulators who strive to ensure the safety of medicines sometimes give different advice to companies developing drugs than do health technology assessment (HTA) bodies that rule on the cost effectiveness of the same drugs.
Arpida Ltd and Evolva SA have announced plans to merge to create a larger, publicly-listed biotechnology company with a pipeline of drug candidates as well as revenue-generating discovery partnerships.
Osiris Therapeutics Inc said that preliminary results from two Phase 3 trials of its stem cell treatment for acute graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) did not reach their primary endpoints.