News

AstraZeneca Plc delivered a 4% increase in product sales in 2018 – the first annual increase since 2009 – prompting the company to declare a return to growth after years of patent expiries and efforts to rebuild its pharmaceutical pipeline.

Driving the increase were higher sales of the lung cancer drug Tagrisso, the diabetes medicine Farxiga and the antiplatelet Brilinta. In addition, the company generated more than $600 million each from Lynparza and Imfinzi, both new cancer medicines.

A venture capital syndicate led by Netherlands-based Life Sciences Partners (LSP) is  providing $180 million to Arvelle Therapeutics GmbH, a recently created Swiss company, which has exclusive rights to develop and commercialise a new epilepsy drug in Europe.

The Series A funding is reportedly one of the largest rounds of its kind for a European-focused biopharmaceutical company. Besides LSP, the syndicate includes Andera Partners, NovaQuest Capital Management, BRV Capital Management and H.I.G. BioHealth Partners.

Grey Wolf Therapeutics Ltd, an Oxford, UK based immuno-oncology company, has raised £10 million in a Series A financing round to advance new small molecule drugs for cancer. The financing was provided by Andera Partners (formerly Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners) and Canaan Partners of the US.

Following a multi-year restructuring programme, H. Lundbeck A/S delivered a gross profit margin of 29.3% in 2018, along with higher revenue and an increase in operating profit. Deborah Dunsire, who became chief executive on 1 September 2018, said the outcome was the company’s “best financial result ever.”

Group revenue was DKK 18.1 billion (€2.4 billion), up by 5% from a year earlier while operating profit was DKK 5.3 billion, up by 20%. The gross operating margin of 29.3% compares with a margin of 25.6% the year before and is above the company’s long-term target of 25%.

Sanofi SA is restructuring its portfolio to focus on developing new specialty care medicines including those for rare blood disorders, while maintaining a commitment to vaccines. The France-based multinational gave the R&D update with the release of its 2018 financial results which showed a decline in both group sales and net income.

Group sales were €34.5 billion, down by 1.7% while net income was €4.3 billion, down by 48.8%, in accordance with international financial reporting standards.

Avacta Group Plc, which is developing a new type of protein therapeutic, is to license certain assets to Moderna Therapeutics Inc against a potential therapeutic target which has been part of an ongoing research collaboration between the two companies. In an announcement on 4 February, Avacta said that Moderna has exercised an option to the technology. As a result, it may receive undisclosed payments for reaching future clinical development milestones, as well as royalties on future product sales.

The UK contract research organisation Metrion Biosciences Ltd has entered into a collaboration with LifeArc (formerly Medical Research Council Technology) to discover new drugs in the field of neurology. The goal is to identify selective small molecule modulators of a specific ion channel target which gene association studies have identified as likely to be involved with neurological diseases.

Patent litigation involving two of Europe’s most important antibody companies plus Janssen Biotech formally ended on 31 January after the parties agreed to drop their mutual claims. The lawsuit was brought by MorphoSys AG against Genmab A/S and its partner Janssen relating to Darzalex (daratumumab), the latter companies’ marketed drug for multiple myeloma.

The pace of change accelerated at GlaxoSmithKline Plc in 2018 as the company redirected its therapeutic focus towards oncology and took the first steps towards spinning off its consumer products business into a separate company. Emma Walmsley, chief executive since April 2017, said in a teleconference on 6 February that the company’s key priority going forward is to “rebuild the pharmaceutical pipeline.”

GlaxoSmithKline Plc has entered into a cancer collaboration with Merck KGaA of Germany which features a direct challenge to Keytruda’s (pembrolizumab) dominant position in lung cancer. Announced on 5 February, the partnership involves the co-development and commercialisation of the Merck asset M7824 (bintrafusp alfa) which is an investigational bifunctional fusion protein immunotherapy.