Pacira Pharmaceuticals Inc. has big plans for 2011. The Parsippany, N.J.-based company expects to make an initial public offering with expected net proceeds of up to $65.9 million to get its lead analgesic candidate Exparel (bupivacaine) off the ground. Read More
The passage of health care reform last year has given all the players in the health care field a new set of hurdles, albeit with many opportunities, that now must be negotiated, and Nancy-Ann DeParle, counselor to the president and director of the White House Office of Health Reform, discussed those issues as a luncheon keynote speaker during last week's J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco. Read More
"There's been a lot of talk about moving next-generation sequencing into clinical diagnostic settings," Stephen Kingsmore told BioWorld Today. Last week, Kingsmore and a team of colleagues reported a big step in that direction: the development of a carrier test that screens for about 450 rare recessive disorders and could be used on either parents or infants. Read More
Orexo AB, of Uppsala, Sweden, and Invida Group Private Ltd., of Singapore, signed an exclusive licensing and distribution agreement for Abstral, a cancer pain therapy. Read More
Advaxis Inc., of North Brunswick, N.J., received approval from the data safety monitoring board to dose remaining patients in its trial of ADXS11-001 immunotherapy in cervical dysplasia. Read More
Immunitor USA Inc., of College Park, Md., has received U.S. Patent No. 7,838,006, titled "Viral vaccine composition, process and methods of use," relating to claims covering the composition of matter for Immunitor's lead product, V5. Read More
The purported link between vaccination and autism received roughly the 20th nail in its coffin with a publication in the Jan. 8, 2011, issue of the British Medical Journal reporting new evidence that the research claiming to show such a link was fraudulent. Read More