News

This year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology has been awarded to a team of scientists who discovered the hepatitis C virus. Harvey J Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M Rice have made a “decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis,” according to the prize committee.

Vaccibody AS, a clinical-stage Norwegian biotech, has entered an exclusive licensing deal with Genentech to develop and commercialise a DNA vaccine equipped with neoepitopes specific to a patient’s tumour. The vaccine, VB10.NEO, is designed to induce an immune response that is tailored to the tumours. It has already generated data in several cancers in a Phase 1/2a study.

The Swiss-US health technology company Sophia Genetics SA has raised $110 million in a Series F financing round to expand its artificial intelligence service which analyses medical data for use by healthcare professionals. The proceeds will enable the company to develop the platform and expand its operations in the US and Asia.

The European Medicines Agency has started a rolling review of a prospective vaccine for Covid-19 being developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca Plc on the basis of preliminary data showing that it triggered the production of antibodies and T cells that target the virus. The agency announced the review on 1 October.

A new fund for medical diagnostics has secured €50 million in capital from leading European institutions, including the European Investment Fund (EIP), an agency of the EU. The fund, Kurma Diagnostics 2, is being launched by Kurma Partners, a venture capital company based in Paris, France. It is expected to invest in about 15 companies specialising in molecular and digital diagnostic technologies.

Galecto Inc has raised $64 million in equity financing to prepare for a potential conditional approval of its lead product for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in the EU and to further advance its clinical-stage products for liver fibrosis and myelofibrosis.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new indication for Nucala (mepolizumab) for hypereosinophilic syndrome (HES), a group of rare blood disorders characterised by the overproduction of eosinophils, a type of white blood cell. It is the first approval for this patient group in nearly 14 years.

Prescription drugs sold in Canada at cheaper prices than in the US will be eligible for importation under a new rule adopted by the US Food and Drug Administration on 25 September. The rule implements an executive order issued by the White House in July.

A case study of a 45-year old woman with severe Covid-19 has shown that administration of APN01, an experimental biologic, enabled the generation of neutralising antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and a rapid drop in virus load. The results of the study were reported online in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine on 24 September 2020.

The gene and cell therapy industry has significant potential. But this will only be realised if manufacturers share information about their technologies, enabling the advanced therapies to be produced at scale and marketed at affordable prices.