News

The European Medicines Agency has decided that for the time being, there is no need to change the prescribing information for abacavir, a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor, which is used in combination with other antiviral medicines to treat patients with HIV. This follows the release of data from a large study which suggested that recent use of abacavir may be linked with an increased risk of myocardial infarction, the agency said in a press release issued on 2 April 2008.

In 2007, Silence Therapeutics Plc chose its present name and recruited a new chief executive officer and a vice president for intellectual property in order to sharpen its focus on  RNAi-based therapeutics. These are compounds made up of double-stranded fragments of RNA that can silence genes that lead to disease

Oxford NanoLabs Ltd, a British developer of DNA sequencing technology, has raised £10 million through a private placement of shares.

Pieris AG, a closely-held German company that is developing proteins similar to monoclonal antibodies, has raised €25 million through a series B placement of new shares.

The German drug developer, 4SC AG, said it has advanced negotiations with a number of pharmaceutical companies about licensing out its lead product for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, SC12267.

Newron Pharmaceuticals S.p.A. expects to increase spending on research and development in 2008 as its two lead products, safinamide and ralfinamide, progress through the clinic, and it absorbs the pipeline of Hunter-Fleming, its recent UK acquisition.

GPC Biotech AG has confirmed that its cash reserves are sufficient to cover about three years of business operations following a regulatory setback in 2007 that affected its lead cancer product, satraplatin.  On 31 December 2007, cash and cash equivalents amounted to €65.2 million, which is enough to cover development of the company’s most promising oncology programmes, GPC said in a statement on 27 March 2008.

The decision of 3i, one of Britain’s largest private equity firms, to stop investing in start-ups and early-stage companies will reduce the financing options for a number of small companies. But the amount of money involved is relatively small compared with 3i’s total assets under management, the company said.

Pharming Group NV said it will apply to market its human protein, Rhucin, in Turkey as part of a broader strategy to tap markets outside the European Union following the European Medicine Agency’s refusal to overturn a negative opinion on its marketing authorisation application for the product.

Silence Therapeutics Plc has concluded a second collaboration with AstraZeneca in the field of RNA interference, a relatively new technology which is being investigated for the treatment of a number of major diseases.