Bumetanide, a diuretic pill commonly used for treating fluid retention for those with heart, kidney or liver disease, showed a significantly lower prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease in its users than those not taking it.
Pacira Biosciences Inc. will add to its core non-opioid-based therapies business by buying Flexion Therapeutics Inc. for $427 million. That brings into the company’s fold Zilretta (triamcinolone acetonide extended-release injectable suspension) for treating osteoarthritis knee pain, an injectable non-opioid that’s already FDA approved in addition to being in a phase II study for treating shoulder osteoarthritis.
A lack of toxicity and the shrinking of tumors were at the heart of new interim data produced from a two-stage phase II study by Relay Therapeutics Inc. The company reported that the oral small molecule RLY-4008, designed to elicit responses across a broad spectrum of resistance mutations and in multiple tumor types, selectively inhibited fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) 2 in ways that are not limited by off-target toxicities of hyperphosphatemia (FGFR1) and diarrhea (FGFR4).
Data from two phase I studies from Prelude Therapeutics Inc. helped open the American Association for Cancer Research virtual International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics on Oct. 7 but tugged the company’s stock sharply downward.
Privately held Retrotope Inc., the only company currently in the clinic studying the ultra-rare and fatal neurological disorder infantile neuroaxonal dystrophy, has new data it hopes to present to the FDA early next year.
Selecta Biosciences Inc. joined a licensing agreement with Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. to develop AAV-driven gene therapies for two lysosomal storage disorders that could bring Watertown, Mass.-based Selecta up to $1.124 billion. The payments depend upon hitting development or commercial milestones. Selecta is also receiving an undisclosed up-front payment and is eligible for tiered royalties on commercial sales.
Exo Therapeutics Inc. has completed an oversubscribed series B financing for $78 million allowing the small-molecule company to continue developing therapies for treating cancer and inflammation.
Exo’s pipeline, created from its Exosight platform, has preclinical candidates that bind exosites, which are distal binding pockets for reprogramming enzyme activity. The exosite drugs include structural and computational biology, protein engineering and DNA-encoded libraries.
Selecta Biosciences Inc. joined a licensing agreement with Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. to develop AAV-driven gene therapies for two lysosomal storage disorders that could bring Watertown, Mass.-based Selecta up to $1.124 billion. The payments depend upon hitting development or commercial milestones. Selecta is also receiving an undisclosed up-front payment and is eligible for tiered royalties on commercial sales.
In the year’s second biggest M&A deal, Merck & Co. Inc. will take over pulmonary and hematologic specialist Acceleron Pharma Inc. for $11.5 billion. The acquisition brings Merck a pair of potential blockbuster drugs, one of them already marketed. There is sotatercept, in development for treating pulmonary hypertension (PH), and also Reblozyl (luspatercept-aamt), the first and only erythroid maturation agent approved in the U.S., Europe and Canada for treating anemia in certain blood disorders.
With the FDA approval of Abbvie Inc.’s Qulipta (atogepant) to prevent episodic migraine in adults, the oral calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) receptor antagonist became the first specifically developed for preventing migraine.
