Three large pharmaceutical companies have set up a new not-for-profit company to conduct research into the most commonly-diagnosed cancers in Asia. The initial focus of the research will be on lung and gastric cancers.
The US Food and Drug Administration has accelerated its review of a new product for Fabry disease produced by Shire Plc as supply shortages of the only currently marketed treatment for the disease continue.
Following the failure of its lead compound for migraine, Addex Pharmaceuticals Ltd is refocusing its clinical development and partnering efforts on a candidate treatment for patients with Parkinson’s disease.
Shire Plc, the British specialty pharma company, produced 2009 revenues of $3 billion, little changed from the previous year. This was an accomplishment because sales of its best-selling drug fell 43% after it lost its US patent protection in the 2009 first quarter.
In a boost for the emerging field of epigenetics, privately-owned CellCentric Ltd of Cambridge, UK has negotiated access to one of its cancer discovery programmes to Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. The deal is valued at about $200 million.
The ReNeuron Group Plc has raised £4.7 million, before expenses, from a private share placement with existing and new institutional investors in order to finance its ground-breaking, first-in-man study of a stem cell therapy for stroke.
The US Food and Drug Administration has given Novartis AG’s investigational drug for multiple sclerosis, fingolimod, priority review status, a speedier regulatory pathway for drugs that promise major advances in treatment.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has recommended approval of GlaxoSmithKline’s new angiogenesis inhibitor for renal cell cancer, Votrient (pazopanib), conditional on further proof of the drug’s effectiveness.
The European Medicines Agency has taken the unusual step of rejecting a marketing authorisation application for an antibiotic because the human studies supporting the drug did not comply with good clinical practice.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved MabThera ( rituximab), plus chemotherapy, for people with previously untreated or previously treated CD20-positive chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, the Roche group announced.