Crowned by a potential cure for severe hemophilia A, that could become the most expensive drug ever, a new list of 11 medicines expected to generate $1 billion-plus in annual sales by the end of 2024 or earlier throws into stark relief the growing tension between medical innovation and society's ability to pay for it. The 2020 Cortellis Drugs to Watch list, including medicines both approved and likely to be, points to a future of ongoing conflict between payers and industry spurred by fundamental disagreements.
DUBLIN – Azafaros BV raised €25 million (US$27.5 million) to develop orally available azasugar drugs with potential application to multiple lysosomal storage diseases.
About a month-and-a-half earlier than expected, Horizon Therapeutics plc has won FDA approval for teprotumumab in thyroid eye disease (TED), a progressive autoimmune condition that disproportionately affects women.
The prospects for Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc.'s adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene therapy, DTX-301, in patients with ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) deficiency weren't looking too great after treatment of the first two cohorts in a phase I/II study.
Applied Therapeutics Inc. (ATI) CEO Shoshana Shendelman said positive top-line findings with aldose reductase inhibitor AT-007 in galactosemia were “the data we needed, and we’re going to move as quickly as we can to get in and speak to the FDA about this, not only to firm up our NDA filing but also to get into the pediatric study.”
Novome Biotechnologies Inc., a startup developing a hyperoxaluria therapy based on controlled colonization of the gut with engineered bacteria, has landed a $33 million series A financing and appointed former Achaogen Inc. chief Blake Wise as CEO.
DUBLIN – Gene therapy firm Freeline Therapeutics Ltd. secured the first $40 million tranche of an $80 million series C round from its founding investor and principal shareholder Syncona plc to generate further data from its two clinical-stage programs, in hemophilia B and Fabry disease, to fund expansion of its team and to continue the ongoing buildout of its manufacturing operations in Munich.
As Wall Street ponders how pricing and reimbursement for gene therapies might shake out, companies in the field march intrepidly on, among them Orchard Therapeutics Inc., which early this month rolled out heartening results from an ongoing proof-of-concept trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of OTL-203 for mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS-I), a space that's heating up.
Findings disclosed from Synlogic Inc.'s phase Ib/IIa trial with SYNB-1020 in hyperammonemia surprised the company and Wall Street, dealing a blow to the compound but leaving in place the Synthetic Biotic platform, which genetically engineers probiotic microbes.
Although the placebo response proved better than expected in Chiasma Inc.'s phase III trial of Mycapssa (octreotide) capsules for acromegaly, "we believe that the response of the patients on Mycapssa is the clinically relevant indicator," said William Ludlam, the Waltham, Mass.-based firm's senior vice president of clinical development and medical affairs.
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