Novo Nordisk A/S , the largest manufacturer of diabetes products, encountered a smaller rise in revenue in 2014 for the second consecutive year as the impact of Obamacare continued to put pressure on price increase in the company’s largest market.
Enrolment has stopped in a Wellcome Trust-funded trial of an experimental treatment for the Ebola virus in Liberia following a significant fall in new cases of the infection, the Trust announced on 3 February. The drug’s producer, Chimerix Inc, had previously said it would no longer support the trial.
A senior official in Britain’s Conservative-led government has outlined a policy for supporting the biotech industry that rests on aligning the clinical assets of the National Health Service more closely with some the newest technologies emerging from industry.
Ascendis Pharma A/S of Denmark has issued 6.9 million shares in the United States at $18 per share, generating net proceeds of $111.5 million. In early trading on 3 February 2015 the shares traded at $19.08 on the Nasdaq, representing a 6.0% premium.
The buzz at the Phacilitate Cell & Gene Therapy Forum in Washington DC on 26 to 28 January was that gene therapy will become a mainstream activity in the global pharmaceutical industry over the next five years, driven in part by the new gene-modified cell therapies and genome editing.
AstraZeneca Plc is to work with four research institutes in the UK and the US to apply a genome editing technology known as CRISPR across its drug discovery platform. The collaborations are expected to yield new drug targets in preclinical models of disease.
Canada-based EnGene Inc, which has developed a gene-based technology to treat autoimmune diseases, has raised $11.5 million in a Series B investment round. The funds will be used to advance the lead product which is intended to treat ulcerative colitis.
NightstaRx Ltd, a one-year old gene therapy company, has received £5 million in new venture finance to expedite the development of a treatment for choroideremia, an inherited cause of progressive blindness. This brings total funding for the company to £17 million.
Roche stepped up its acquisition activity in 2014 with the goal of broadening its pharmaceutical base and augmenting its diagnostics business with new gene sequencing technologies. Sales of oncology drugs were a key growth driver, but at least one late-stage cancer trial failed to show statistical superiority.
Novartis expects that group net sales will continue to grow this year despite an increase in generic competition for its off-patent medicines. Cost savings, and the completion of an asset swap with GlaxoSmithKline Plc that will narrow the company’s focus to three global businesses, is expected to drive profitability.