News

Novo Nordisk A/S expects sales and operating profit to increase in 2018 on a currency-adjusted basis as it takes steps to reduce its workforce and diversify its portfolio. The Danish producer of diabetes products is expanding into other biologic products as well as new delivery technologies for insulin.

Sanofi reported higher net earnings per share in the third quarter and is forecasting a rise for the year as a whole. But a continued decline in US insulin sales translated into a lower gross profit margin for the quarter and the first nine months of 2018. 

GlaxoSmithKline Plc has issued improved guidance for adjusted earnings per share for 2018 following an increase in sales at constant exchange rates for the third quarter and first nine months, and a better operating margin. In a teleconference with journalists on 31 October, Emma Walmsley, the chief executive, highlighted sales of the company’s shingles’ vaccine Shingrix, the HIV medicines Triumeq and Tivicay, and new respiratory products.

Austria-based Themis Bioscience GmbH may raise up to €55.3 million in an initial public offering on Euronext Amsterdam and share placements in the US and elsewhere to finance the clinical development of its lead vaccine for Chikungunya, a mosquito-borne viral infection.

Denmark-based Galecto Biotech AB has raised €79 million in a Series C financing round to support a Phase 2/3 trial of its lead product for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic disease characterised by a progressive decline in lung function.

A prospective treatment for patients with schizophrenia, who have not responded to other drugs, failed to show statistical superiority in a Phase 3 trial compared with conventional therapy, H. Lundbeck A/S announced on 25 October.

AbbVie Inc is to take full control of a joint cystic fibrosis (CF) research and development programme with Galapagos NV with the goal of bringing a triple combination CF therapy to the market. Currently in early clinical development, the programme consists of potentiator and corrector drug molecules that are intended to increase the activity of mutated copies of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator protein that causes the disease.

France-based Enterome SA has out-licensed its lead microbiome-directed product for the treatment of Crohn’s disease to Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd for the treatment of Crohn’s disease, generating an upfront payment of $50 million, a future equity investment and potential milestone payments of $640 million.

Positive data from two Phase 2 studies of filgotinib, a Janus kinase 1 inhibitor being developed for several inflammatory conditions, were published online on 22 October 2018 in The Lancet, Gilead Sciences Inc and Galapagos NV announced.

The European Medicines Agency has recommended the approval of Dengvaxia (dengue tetravalent vaccine) for the prevention of dengue, the most common mosquito-borne viral disease affecting people worldwide. The vaccine is for the prevention of dengue caused by the virus serotypes 1,2,3 and 4 in people between the ages of nine and 45 and who have already had a prior infection.