When James Peyer, Cambrian Biopharma Inc.’s CEO, watched his grandfather fail every cancer treatment and eventually pass away, he came to a realization that now forms the backbone of his company. “The more I learned about cancer, the more convinced I became that we were approaching cancer as a disease in the wrong way,” Peyer told BioWorld. “We were waiting until people were sick and only then doing something about it.” Cambrian just closed on an oversubscribed series C that brought in $100 million to develop a pipeline of therapies designed to treat and prevent age-related diseases.
Omeros Corp.’s complete response letter (CRL) from the FDA regarding its BLA for narsoplimab did not come as much of a surprise to Wall Street, but still was enough to drive shares (NASDAQ:OMER) down 26.6% to close Oct. 18 at $5.67, a loss of $2.06.
PARIS – Teams from the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, the Institute for Research in Development, Sorbonne University and the National Institute of Health and Medical Research are proposing a new technique that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to identify the risk of developing a type of cardiac arrhythmia called Torsades de pointes (TdP) associated with taking certain drugs.
Feops SA reported that its Heartguide product has received de novo authorization from the FDA for pre-operative planning of left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAo) with the Boston Scientific Corp. Watchman device. The software platform is designed to help physicians virtually model clinical scenarios with different implant positions and sizes of the Watchman device using digital twin technology based on patient-specific virtual replicas of the heart. It is currently commercially available in the EU, U.K., Canada and Australia for transcatheter aortic valve implantation and LAAo workflows.
After nearly two years of waiting, Withings SA won FDA clearance for its Scanwatch, a smartwatch that can take an electrocardiogram and monitor for sleep disturbances indicative of sleep apnea or respiratory illnesses such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The FDA action makes the watch the first cleared for both functions.
Less than two weeks after Japan’s MHLW became the first regulatory agency to clear avacopan for anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis, the FDA has followed suit. It cleared the oral, small-molecule C5aR antagonist for use as an adjunct therapy for adults with the two main forms of the rare autoimmune renal disease, granulomatosis with polyangiitis and microscopic polyangiitis, in combination with standard therapy.
Boston Scientific Corp. agreed to acquire the Baylis Medical Company Inc.’s cardiology business, Baylis Medical Co., for an upfront payment of $1.75 billion, subject to closing adjustments. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022. Baylis Medical Technologies, which focuses on radiology and neurosurgery, is not part of the deal and will remain a separate entity.