Santaris Pharma A/S is to receive $6.5 million upfront from Shire Plc for giving the UK company access to its locked nucleic acid (LNA) drug platform for identifying drug candidates against certain targets to treat rare genetic disorders.
The UK specialty pharmaceutical company, ProStrakan Group Plc, is to receive $10 million upfront in an exclusive licensing and distribution deal with Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc for its testosterone replacement therapy, Fortesta.
Affitech A/S, a therapeutic antibody company that was created in May 2009 by the merger of a privately-owned Norwegian company and Pharmexa A/S of Denmark, plans to raise new equity capital this year to finance its antibody programme.
Ark Therapeutics Group Plc said that it expects a regulatory decision on its application to market a novel gene therapy in Europe for patients with malignant glioma, a type of brain cancer, by the end of 2009.
Geron Corporation of Menlo Park, California, has submitted further animal data to the US Food and Drug Administration on its first-in-man study of a stem cell treatment for spinal cord injury and the agency has put a clinical hold on the study.
The European Medicines Agency gave a record number of positive opinions for new medicines in 2008. However the number of applications that were rejected by the agency, or withdrawn by the applicant, also increased significantly, according to the EMEA’s 2008 annual report.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved H. Lundbeck A/S’s anti-epileptic drug, Sabril (vigabatrin), to treat spasms in infants and seizures in adults. Lundbeck acquired Sabril when it bought Ovation Pharmaceuticals Inc in March.
The French national research agency, ANR (L'Agence nationale de la recherche), is to award €2.2 million to TcL Pharma, a biotechnology company which is developing drugs for organ and tissue transplantation and auto-immune disease.
Intercell AG reported revenue of €14.9 million in the second quarter of 2009, helped by the launch of its first product, a vaccine to protect against Japanese Encephalitis, on markets in Europe, the US and Australia.
Pronova BioPharma ASA has completed construction of a new plant in Denmark which will enable it to meet higher demand for its omega-3 derived prescription drug for hypertriglyceridemia, Omacor/Lovaza.