Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc. started the week with a double win: preparations to launch its lead product, Nuplazid (pimavanserin), and a first FDA approval in the indication: treatment of hallucinations and delusions associated with Parkinson's disease psychosis (PDP).
Homology Medicines Inc., formed quietly last year, held its coming-out party by disclosing the close of a $43.5 million series A preferred stock financing co-led by 5AM Ventures and Arch Venture Partners, with participation from Singapore-based investment firm Temasek along with Deerfield Management and Arch Overage Fund.
Celgene Corp. coasted through currency exchange headwinds. Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. focused on its emerging pipeline after soft Orkambi sales. And Gilead Sciences Inc. fell shy of analyst expectations. Amgen Inc. saved the day with higher-than-expected profits and raised guidance.
UBS Wealth Management is getting into the cancer game. The financial services giant, which has joint headquarters in Basel and Zurich, Switzerland, raised $471 million to close the UBS Oncology Impact Fund, thought to be a first-of-its-kind initiative aimed at developing curative therapies for various types of cancer.
As the dust settled from Monday's grueling meeting of the FDA's Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee (adcom), companies, investors, analysts and, most importantly, patients and family members were left to ponder the road forward for therapies to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Although the outcome of the adcom for sponsor Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. was generally deemed a step backward for its lead candidate, eteplirsen, adcom members didn't shut the door entirely in their nonbinding votes on the exon-skipping drug.
We live in an aging world, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report of the same name issued last month. Based on 2015 data, researchers Wan He and Daniel Goodkind of the Census Bureau and Paul Kowal of the World Health Organization's Study on Global Aging and Adult Health amassed some startling statistics.
Shares of Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:SRPT) plunged 44 percent in heavy trading Thursday after the FDA posted revised briefing documents for Monday's re-scheduled meeting of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs (PCNS) Advisory Committee (adcom) to discuss the new drug application (NDA) for its Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) candidate, eteplirsen.
Seeking to succeed where big pharma failed, start-up Dalcor Pharma UK Ltd. completed a $100 million series B round to put an exclamation point on the $50 million series A the company closed late in 2015.
Intrexon Corp. aligned with and dished out some dough to two start-ups pledging to pursue human therapeutics. The firm inked exclusive channel collaborations with Relieve Genetics Inc., which intends to explore a non-opioid gene therapy approach to treat neuropathic pain, and Exotech Bio Inc., which plans to employ an exosome-based platform to deliver therapeutic RNA to treat select cancer indications.
