The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new combination therapy for advanced melanoma and has advised physicians to test for certain genetic mutations before prescribing the drugs. Both treatments are marketed by Genentech (Roche).
Evotec AG, which combines proprietary drug research and development with a service business, raised its revenue forecast for all of 2015, the second upward revision since the start of the year.
Germany-based Probiodrug AG has increased its share capital by 10% or €13.5 million in order to finance further development of its treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. The private share placement follows an initial public offering of the company’s shares in late 2014 that raised €23.2 million.
NightstaRx Ltd, a 2014 spinout from the University of Oxford, has raised $35 million in a Series B financing round to further develop a candidate gene therapy for choroideremia, an inherited form of progressive blindness.
It is now widely believed that people who are carriers of a gene called apolipoprotein E are at a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease than those who do not. This does not mean that all carriers of the gene will develop the disease. But the risk is there, which is why an increasing number of companies are focusing their attention on this patient population to find out whether a pharmaceutical intervention could make a difference to their lives.
Sanofi SA has updated its medium-term business strategy to warn investors not to expect any ‘meaningful’ growth in profits over the next two years. Concurrently, it disclosed plans to explore options for its Merial animal healthcare and its European generic medicines businesses.
AstraZeneca Plc has taken steps to shore up its portfolio of drugs for cardiovascular and metabolic disease with the agreed acquisition of ZS Pharma Inc of the US which has a product under review at the Food and Drug Administration for treating hyperkalaemia.
H. Lundbeck A/S produced good sales figures for the third quarter and first nine months but its costs were adversely affected by a change in accounting policies and charges related to restructuring.
BioNTech AG, a German company with messenger RNA technology suitable for human therapeutics, has signed a multi-year licensing deal with Sanofi SA to discover and develop up to five cancer immunotherapies.
A drug-discovery partner for many years, MorphoSys AG is putting a new emphasis on developing its proprietary portfolio with the goal of commercialising its lead antibody therapy for non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas (NHL) later in the decade.