Gaba Therapeutics Inc., of Newport Beach, Calif., closed on a series A of up to $15.5 million to create a new compound for treating mood disorders, particularly anxiety and depression.
As is often the case, it was a personal and devastating encounter with disease that brought Paul Mischel, a founder of newly launched Boundless Bio Inc., to the life sciences. When he lost his father to cancer, he dedicated his career to finding a cure.
Results from Zynerba Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s phase II Believe 1 trial created a Rodney Dangerfield moment Wednesday when the generally positive data were met with the back of the market's hand as the stock dropped 21.8% on the day.
Management's first flush of excitement two years ago in creating new therapies and a new company led also to the creation of Edgewise Therapeutics Inc.'s name. "We were all talking and no one could get a word in edgewise," Kevin Koch, Edgewise's president and CEO, told BioWorld. "It just made sense."
A study two years in the making concluded that the NIH's Bethesda, Md., campus needs a $1.3 billion upgrade to its buildings and facilities in order to succeed in what it calls "a highly competitive global biomedical research environment."
Ritter Pharmaceuticals Inc. is reeling from the phase III failure of its lead candidate, RP-G28, designed for patients with lactose intolerance. RP-G28 failed to demonstrate statistical significance in its primary endpoint as the top-line data showed it had no or little difference on patients compared to placebo. The data also show RP-G28 missed its secondary endpoints, all of which casts a shadow on the company and its pipeline.
Nkarta Therapeutics Inc.'s CEO, Paul Hastings, said while the clever spelling of the company's name puts its natural killer cell platform at the fore, he is also prompted more often than not to have to spell it out, just to make sure there's no mistake. Still, he added, the occasional hotel bill is sent to Encarta instead of Nkarta.
The Asia Pacific region (APAC) is vast and awash with varied economies, languages, governments and ambitions. That's the backdrop for its dramatic underperformance compared to the West's pharmaceutical innovations. Yet plenty of opportunities exist, along with a healthy dose of uncertainty, according to the first Pharmaceutical Innovation in the APAC region report, published by Clarivate Analytics plc.
Following its phase II stumble of AR-105, Aridis Pharmaceuticals Inc. is dropping its development of the IgG1 monoclonal antibody. The study failed to meet its primary endpoint of showing superiority in clinical cure rates compared to placebo for treating ventilator-associated pneumonia caused by gram-negative Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
In retrospect, it seems inevitable that an algorithm would be appointed to a board of directors. Hong Kong-based Deep Knowledge Ventures named Vital (an acronym for Validating Investment Tool for Advancing Life Sciences) to its board five years ago and credits it with making better decisions than its fellow members, humans all.
