News

The founders of Celtic Pharma, a specialised private equity firm, are launching two new funds to invest in products and companies that show promise of addressing unmet medical needs.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has announced strategic alliances with biotechnology companies in Belgium and the US that will give it access to technology for developing new anti-infective and anti-cancer medicines.

MorphoSys AG of Germany and GeneFrontier Corporation of Japan are expanding their partnership arrangements to cover the commercialisation of therapeutic targets produced by Japanese research institutes and universities that make use of MorphoSys’s huge antibody library.

Cambridge Laboratories (Ireland) Ltd said that an advisory panel of the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has recommended approval of its treatment for chorea associated with Huntington’s disease, Xenazine (tetrabenazine).

Novartis AG has extended its three-year-old research collaboration with the German biotechnology company, MorphoSys AG, by 10 years in order to increase its involvement in developing therapeutic antibodies, which is MorphoSys’s specialty.

Evotec AG has completed the sale of its chemical development business, which includes an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) facility in Oxford, UK, and a parenteral, fill-finish facility in Glasgow, UK, to Aptuit Inc. of the United States for a consideration of £31.5 million.

Addex Pharmaceuticals SA and Merck, Sharp and Dohme Research Ltd, an affiliate of Merck & Co, have entered into an exclusive collaboration and licensing agreement to develop a new class of ingested drugs that potentially will treat Parkinson’s disease and other diseases.

e-Therapeutics, which uses informatics for discovering the safety and efficacy of new combinations or applications of existing medical compounds, has received a listing on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange.

Exiqon A/S, a Danish supplier of gene-expression analysis products, is acquiring California-based Oncotech Inc, which markets diagnostic tests to optimise drug-treatment selection for cancer patients.

Companies that wish to develop drugs for rare or life-threatening diseases can now apply for financial incentives from the US and the European Union (EU) using a single application form.