News

Roche said that it has reached an agreement to take over the privately-owned Mirus Bio Corporation of Madison, Wisconsin, for $125 million in order to gain access to the company’s RNAi delivery technology.

GlaxoSmithKline has signed its first ever research agreement with the University of Cambridge in the UK to develop a novel, centrally-acting agent with therapeutic potential for obesity and addictive disorders. Financial terms were not disclosed.

GlaxoSmithKline has decided to concentrate its research on eight areas, including biopharmaceuticals, and to increase its collaborations with external partners. In the future, up to 50% of the company’s drug discovery programmes could be sourced externally, GSK’s chief executive officer, Andrew Witty, told investors on 23 July 2008.

Shareholders of Genentech Inc initially looked like they would not accept Roche’s cash bid of $89 per share for all the shares of Genentech that it doesn’t already own. Following the takeover announcement on 21 July 2008, Genentech shares were trading above the bid price with an early quote at $93.50.

There is at least one forum every year where biopharmaceutical executives can pose questions directly to the management of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. This is the ‘CDER Town Meeting’ at the annual meeting of the Drug Information Association (DIA).

Galapagos NV of Belgium said that it has received a €1 million payment from Eli Lilly and Co for reaching the first milestone in a collaboration in osteoporosis.

Novartis AG has extended its research collaboration with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals  relating to the development of therapeutics based on RNA interference (RNAi) for one year through October 2009.

The German drug developer, 4SC AG, said that it has raised €29.45 million from existing and new shareholders in order to finance its acquisition of eight oncology projects from Nycomed, a privately-owned, Zurich-based pharmaceutical company. The capital increase was supported by Santo Holding (Deutschland) GmbH, which is 4SC’s largest shareholder.

The Swiss biopharmaceutical company, Actelion AG, will receive CHF 150 million (£66 million) up-front and up to CHF 3.15 billion in future milestone payments from GlaxoSmithKline as part of a co-development and co-commercialisation deal for Actelion’s treatment for primary insomnia, almorexant.

Roche AG has discontinued three HIV discovery programmes because it has determined that they were unlikely to yield products that would be sufficiently innovative compared with what is already on the market. The programmes include one non-nucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) and two CCR5s, one of which was a small molecule and the other an antibody. The NNRTi drug candidate was a small molecule.