News

The US biotech, Medivation Inc, has been successful at buying in new medicines for further development, but will selling itself be its most successful deal?

TiGenix NV has decided to withdraw ChondroCelect, its autologous product for knee repair, from the market due to lack of sales. The product was approved for marketing in 2009, but has not been reimbursed in ‘key European countries,’ the company said on 5 July.

A new UK medical device company with technology that aims to improve current methods of ablating tissue in tumours has been launched with seed funding of £500,000. Ablatus Therapeutics Ltd is a spin out of the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Mesoblast Ltd is to do an early interim analysis of a Phase 3 trial of its cell therapy for heart failure in order to take a strategic view of the programme’s future. The analysis will take place in the first quarter of 2017, the Australian company announced on 1 July.

Nicox SA is undertaking another strategic reorganisation with plans to spin out its portfolio of marketed ophthalmology products in Europe into a new company in which it will have a minority stake. It will keep a R&D portfolio that includes two products in registration in the US.

Milan, Italy-based Dianax has received a €2 million European Union grant to support development of a portable diagnostic for the prevention and monitoring of diabetes. The device is designed to provide measurements of glycated haemoglobin.

Evotec AG, whose extensive drug discovery business is divided between services for biotech companies and proprietary work, has obtained non-exclusive access to the gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 in order to strengthen its screening and target identification activities.

TiGenix NV has secured a development and commercialisation deal for a late-stage cell therapy for a Crohn’s disease indication with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd, generating an immediate upfront payment of €25 million while retaining rights to the product in the US.

The US Food and Drug Administration has put a clinical hold on a Phase 2 trial of a new immunotherapy developed by Juno Therapeutics Inc after two patients died in early July. A third patient had previously died at the end of May.

Ablynx NV said that its experimental compound for rheumatoid arthritis, vobarilizumab, was very effective with less frequent administration than tocilizumab when tested as a monotherapy in patients with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis.