News

GlaxoSmithKline Plc is to execute the demerger of its consumer division in July, creating two new public companies one of which will supply products to the global consumer healthcare market. The other will be a new version of the current GSK, only tightly focused on innovative biopharmaceuticals and vaccines.

First announced in late 2018, the demerger is the culmination of three years of planning. GSK’s consumer division was created in 2015 following a transaction with Novartis. It was later enlarged to include assets from Pfizer. 

A UK company founded in August 2021 to build a portfolio of new treatments for ocular diseases has raised $65 million in a Series financing round. EyeBiotech Ltd was co-founded by David Guyer and Anthony Adamis, two experienced opthalmologists. The financing was co-led by Jeito Capital, Samsara BioCapital and SV Health Investors, which also provided the new company with seed funding and helped recruit the leadership team.

BioNTech SE has entered a three-year collaboration with Medigene AG to develop immunotherapies against solid tumours using Medigene’s proprietary T cell receptor (TCR) technology. This technology involves engineering a patient’s own T cells in order to display receptors that can recognise specific cancer antigens. Under the agreement, Medigene’s TCR discovery platform will be used in the development of cancer therapies against tumour targets nominated by BioNTech.

A Phase 3 trial of Dupixent (dupilumab) in patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria has failed to meet its primary endpoints and is being stopped early, Sanofi SA announced on 18 February. Dupixent is a widely prescribed medicine for asthma and atopic dermatitis and is being investigated for a possible new indication in urticaria, a chronic inflammatory skin disease characterised by the sudden onset of hives.

The US Senate has confirmed President Joe Biden’s nomination of Robert Califf to be head of the Food and Drug Administration – a position he held during the final year of the Obama administration. The vote was 50 to 46, the narrowest margin of any confirmed FDA commissioner.

UK-based Oxford Biomedica Plc is to establish a gene therapy manufacturing presence in the US under a new agreement with Homology Medicines Inc, a clinical-stage genetics medicines company located near Boston, US. Homology has experience in the development and use of adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors while Oxford Biomedica has a lentiviral vector delivery platform.

Intellia Therapeutics Inc has taken steps to advance its genome editing technology with the acquisition of Rewrite Therapeutics Inc. Intellia will pay Rewrite shareholders $45 million upfront and an additional $155 million and research and regulatory milestones through a mix of Intellia stock and cash. Further financial details were not disclosed.

Indapta Therapeutics Inc of San Francisco, US, has raised $50 million in a Series A financing round to advance its technology for allogeneic natural killer (NK) cell therapies. This involves isolating and expanding a subset of NK cells known as G-NK cells, suitable for administration with a monoclonal antibody.

Hookipa Pharma Inc is to take responsibility for advancing an antiviral drug candidate for HIV through early clinical development under an amended agreement with its partner Gilead Sciences Inc. Hookipa announced the recasting of the agreement on 15 February.

A woman who was diagnosed with HIV in 2013 and subsequently developed acute myeloid leukaemia, has reportedly seen her HIV go into remission four years after receiving a transplant of stem cells obtained from an infant’s umbilical cord blood. The case, reported by US media on 15 February, was described by scientists at the annual meeting of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infection. It is the third time a patient with HIV has been reportedly cured of an HIV infection.