HONG KONG – Singapore startup Enleofen Bio Pte Ltd. has acquired the licensing rights of a breakthrough discovery by the Duke-National University of Singapore (NUS) Medical School and the National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS) in cardiovascular fibrosis drivers. Read More
"In our minds, you really need [growth hormone] to be small and unmodified," Jonathan Leff, chief medical officer (CMO) for Ascendis Pharma A/S, told BioWorld, since such therapy must "get out of the bloodstream, penetrate into small nooks and crannies such as bone growth plates, and adipose tissue that's poorly vascularized. You don't mess with Mother Nature. It sounds simple and trite, but it's absolutely true in this case." Read More
Making hay while the sun shines on cellular therapies, Seattle-based Juno Therapeutics Inc. is raising up to $318.7 million in a public follow-on offering and concurrent private placement with its partner Celgene Corp. Juno shares (NASDAQ:JUNO) rose 8.5 percent on the news, to close at $45.14 on Friday. Read More
LONDON – Realm Therapeutics plc has sold U.S. and U.K. specialist health care funds on its transformation from disinfection services company to immunotherapy specialist, raising £19.3 million (US$26 million) in a placing to advance its hypochlorous acid product through phase IIb in atopic dermatitis and allergic conjunctivitis. Read More
ApoE variants are the strongest known genetic risk factor not just for Alzheimer's disease (AD), but for any disease. It was first described just about 25 years ago. "And I've worked on it since then," David Holtzman told BioWorld. Read More
As part of a push to strengthen the supply of pharmaceuticals in the country, Nigeria is working to eliminate open markets in favor of a Pharmaceutical Coordinated Wholesale Center. Read More
Bone Therapeutics SA, of Gosselies, Belgium, licensed the Japanese rights to its autologous bone cell therapy product, Preob, for the treatment of osteonecrosis of the hip with the potential for other orthopedic and bone applications to Asahi Kasei Corp., of Tokyo. Read More
Da Volterra SA, of Paris, has been granted a €20 million (US$23.9 million) loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to fund development of DAV132 in the prevention of Clostridium difficile infections and the emergence of resistant bacteria in at-risk patients. Read More
Abbvie Inc., of North Chicago, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., of New York, are collaborating to test the combination of Abbvie's investigational antibody drug conjugate ABBV-399 and Bristol-Myers Squibb's PD-1 antibody Opdivo (nivolumab). Read More
Of the two major DNA repair processes in the cell, homologous repair (HR) is slower and more precise than the quick, error-prone nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ). Read More