Merck & Co Inc has reached an agreement to acquire Idenix Pharmaceuticals Inc for $3.85 billion in a move that will strengthen its portfolio of candidate drugs for hepatitis C infection, a disease that has only recently been treated with a new generation of direct-acting antiviral drugs.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new recombinant product for the treatment of Haemophilia A, an inherited, sex-linked blood clotting disorder that is caused by defects in the Factor VIII gene.
Taking advantage of an improved outlook for gene therapy, Oxford BioMedica Plc is proposing to raise up to £25.7 million in a private share placement and open offer to investors to finance development of its gene-based ophthalmology portfolio and manufacturing activities.
ArGEN-X BV has entered into a strategic antibody alliance with Shire Plc aimed at helping that company discover new therapeutics aligned with its focus on rare diseases. The new alliance follows a successful discovery collaboration between the two companies that started in 2012.
Novartis has reported that patients with polycythemia vera, a type of blood cancer, showed an improvement in their condition compared with the best available therapy following treatment with the JAK inhibitor Jakavi (ruxolitinib).
The UK cell-therapy company Adaptimmune Ltd has entered a collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline Plc to advance the development of an autologous T-cell receptor product for patients with a variety of cancers.
Imperial Innovations Plc has announced plans to raise up £150 million by way of a private share placement with existing and new institutional investors in order to support the financing needs of its portfolio companies and to source new investment opportunities.
An experimental treatment combining the drug olaparib, which blocks DNA repair, with the blood vessel inhibitor cediranib showed a near doubling of progression-free survival in patients with ovarian cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Roche said that results from a Phase 1 open-label study of its checkpoint inhibitor MPDL3280A shrank tumours in 43% of people with a specific type of metastatic bladder cancer. The data was disclosed at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago on 31 May.
Rodin Therapeutics Inc of the US has raised $12.9 million in Series A money from its founding investors in order to advance its pipeline of candidate drugs directed against epigenetic targets for neurological disorders. The company is based on German drug discovery technology.