Celgene Corp is to acquire Juno Therapeutics Inc for $9 billion in an agreed merger that will give the New Jersey, US-based company a stake in the market for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies for cancer, currently dominated by Novartis and Gilead Sciences Inc.
Sanofi SA has announced plans to pay $11.6 billion to acquire Bioverativ Inc of Waltham, Massachusetts, US in order to enhance its position in specialty care. Bioverativ has two marketed products for haemophilia A and B.
Among the technologies in development to treat cancer, ex-vivo gene therapy has gained the most traction in the past 12 months. This follows regulatory approvals for therapies from Novartis and Gilead Sciences Inc where cells are extracted from a patient, treated in a laboratory and reinfused back into the patient.
UK-based Abcam Plc has gained exclusive rights to a portfolio of laboratory tools from Roche giving it a new source of recombinant antibodies for use by its customers in research. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
An early-stage trial of a medicine designed to enhance the effects of radiotherapy has produced promising data from patients with liver cancers. The medicine, NBTXR3, achieved a complete response in three out of seven patients who were eligible for evaluation.
Fiona Marshall, an award winning scientist, is stepping down from her position as chief scientific officer of Sosei Group Corp, owner of Heptares Therapeutics, a company that she co-founded in 2007.
Avacta Group Plc, which has developed a new protein technology for therapeutics, has announced a drug development partnership with Glythera Ltd, a UK developer of antibody drug conjugates (ADC). The goal is to develop ADC drugs for patient care.
A cancer drug that was dropped from development in 2011 but put back into clinical testing two years later with a different group of patients, has received approval for a third indication from the US Food and Drug Administration. The newest approval is to treat patients with certain types of breast cancer whose tumours have a BRCA gene mutation.
Novo Nordisk A/S disclosed on 8 January that it has made a second unsolicited bid for Ablynx NV – this time for €2.6 billion.The Ablynx board has responded saying that the proposal "fundamentally undervalues the company and its future."
The prospect of being able to re-dose a gene therapy has come into the fore with the launch on 4 January of Generation Bio Inc, a company with technology for delivering DNA directly to the liver using lipid nanoparticles rather than a viral vector.