Privately-owned Okairos AG of Switzerland has raised €16 million in a Series B financing round to support development of its portfolio of T-cell vaccines against a range of infectious diseases. The round was led by Versant Ventures of the US.
In separate announcements, AstraZeneca Plc and Pfizer Inc said that trials of their respective treatments for prostate cancer, zibotentan and sunitinib malate, failed to show efficacy at Phase 3. Neither study threw up any unexpected safety issues.
Scientists at the Medical Research Council in the UK have identified a gene that they say plays a key role in the development of the central nervous system. The gene, Sox9, regulates the transformation of neuroepithelial cells into stem cells.
Sanofi Pasteur will pay $55 million upfront to acquire privately-owned, VaxDesign, which develops in vitro models of the human immune system. There is an additional $5 million payment linked to the achievement of certain, undisclosed goals.
The two-year-old Netherlands-based company, arGEN-X BV, has received a €1.5 million grant to accelerate preclinical development of an antibody that targets interleukin 6 (IL-6), a cytokine that plays a role in autoimmune indications.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new combination oral contraceptive from Bayer Schering Pharma AG that contains a folate (levomefolate calcium), in order to protect against neural tube defects during a pregnancy.
The European Medicines Agency has recommended approval of Novartis’s vaccine for adults at risk of infection from H5N1, the subtype of the influenza A virus known as bird flu.
The European Medicines Agency has refused to grant a marketing authorisation for Merck Serono’s new small molecule drug for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, Movectro (cladribine), citing concerns about the medicine’s safety.
A study of life-science start-ups in Britain over the five years to 2009 shows that investment per start-up in some regions is too small to ensure that the companies can be sustainable.
The US and Europe took divergent paths on Thursday in managing the risk of Avandia (rosiglitazone) even as drug regulators in both countries agreed that the cardiovascular risks associated with the medicine outweigh its benefits for patients with Type 2 diabetes.