Latest Posts

• As Alzheimer’s Conference Kicks Off, All Eyes Are on Biogen’s Drug

  It’s the “era of neuroscience”; an industry “turning point”; and “an amazing time”—superlatives were flowing freely as the 11th annual Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease Congress (CTAD) kicked off in rainy San Diego late Wednesday afternoon.

  The atmosphere felt thick with... Read more »

  Sarah de Crescenzo12/5/19

• 6 Experimental Alzheimer’s Disease Diagnostics Projects Get Funding Boost

  Scientists gathered this week in San Diego at the annual Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease Congress are focused on ways to treat the neurodegenerative disease, a task that continues to vex those working to develop potential medicines. Others are working on... Read more »

  Sarah de Crescenzo12/4/19

• Civetta Therapeutics Unveils a Propeller Protein Plan, $53M in Funding

  New biotech company Civetta Therapeutics has closed a $53 million Series A financing round to develop drugs that target “propeller proteins” as a way of treating cancers and other diseases.

  Propeller proteins are found throughout nature, and the circularly arranged “blades”... Read more »

  Melissa Fassbender12/4/19

• FDA Green Lights Sight Diagnostics’ Finger-Prick Blood Test

  Sight Diagnostics today announced it has received US FDA 510(k) clearance to use its patented OLO analyzer, which performs a complete blood count using two drops of blood.

  The FDA clearance gives hospital-run laboratories, diagnostic providers, and outpatient clinics the go-ahead... Read more »

  Melissa Fassbender12/4/19

• Roche Notches FDA Nod in Lung Cancer, Amps Up Competition With Merck

  A Roche immunotherapy has won an additional FDA approval as a first-line treatment for non-small lung cancer, bolstering the product’s competitive stance versus one from Merck.

  The FDA approved atezolizumab (Tecentriq) for adults whose non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan12/4/19

• GHO Capital Raises Over $1bn, Eyes Biotech Outsourcing Services

  GHO Capital will use the money raised to invest in healthcare, including outsourced service providers, which are seeing demand from smaller biotechs, according to a Jefferies analyst.

  GHO Capital raised €975 million ($1.1 billion), which exceeded its €800 million target, and... Read more »

  Melissa Fassbender12/4/19

• Stemonix, Atomwise Team Up on Drug Discovery With MicroOrgans and AI

  Two venture-backed startups that have developed technologies intended to speed up the drug discovery and development process are combining those tools in a bid to achieve their goals together.

  San Francisco-based Atomwise has developed deep learning techniques for use in structure-based... Read more »

  Sarah de Crescenzo12/3/19

• Veracyte Aims to Expand Diagnostics Reach With $50M NanoString Deal

  [Updated 12/4/19, 4:01 p.m. ET. See below.] Veracyte, a company whose tests help physicians make treatment decisions, is adding technology from NanoString to the fold to expand its diagnostic capabilities.

  South San Francisco-based Veracyte (NASDAQ: VCYT) announced Tuesday... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan12/3/19

• A Safer CRISPR? Cyrus, Broad Institute Look to Quell Concerns

  Cyrus Biotechnology and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have teamed up to make gene editing with the CRISPR-Cas9 technology safer.

  The multi-target collaboration, specific details of which are not being disclosed, aims to address longstanding concerns surrounding gene editing:... Read more »

  Melissa Fassbender12/3/19

• Astellas Bets On Gene Therapy With $3B Audentes Acquisition Offer

  Japanese drug giant Astellas Pharma announced late Monday it has agreed to buy Audentes Therapeutics, which is developing gene therapies for rare neuromuscular diseases.

  It’s an all-cash deal worth $3 billion, with the Astellas offer of $60 per share representing a... Read more »

  Sarah de Crescenzo12/3/19

• Neurocrine Inks $50M Xenon Pharma Deal to Expand Into Epilepsy

  Neurocrine Biosciences is paying $30 million cash and taking a $20 million equity stake in Xenon Pharmaceuticals to license a clinical-stage epilepsy drug and collaborate on other potential treatments for the seizure-causing brain disorder.

  The Xenon (NASDAQ: XENE) deal is the... Read more »

  Sarah de Crescenzo12/2/19

• IFM Lands $55.5M to Launch NewCo Quattro and Discovery Incubator

  IFM Therapeutics has raised $55.5 million to launch its third drug subsidiary as well as an incubator, both of which are focused on developing new therapies for inflammatory diseases and cancers.

  Those endeavors will be led by a familiar face. Boston-based... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan12/2/19

• Deep 6 AI Adds $17M To Advance Clinical Trial Recruitment Software

  Software startup Deep 6 AI has developed a system that analyzes a range of patient health records to accelerate the process of identifying candidates for clinical trial recruitment—a longstanding bottleneck in the drug development process.

  The Pasadena, CA-based company, founded in... Read more »

  Melissa Fassbender12/2/19

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• Biotech VC Down 20% in US as Policies Drive Away Foreign Investors, BIO Says

  Reforms to a US national security regulation are putting off foreign investors and driving down VC investment in the biotech space by as much as 20 percent, says BIO’s David Thomas.

  In August 2018, Congress passed the Foreign Investment Risk Review... Read more »

  Dan Stanton11/29/19

• AstraZeneca, Novoheart to Co-Develop New Heart Model

  AstraZeneca has turned to Novoheart’s “human heart-in-a-jar” technology to create a preclinical model that mimics a form of heart failure for which there is no effective therapy available.

  Based on Novoheart’s human ventricular cardiac organoid chamber (hvCOC) technology, the companies are... Read more »

  Melissa Fassbender11/27/19

• La Jolla Pharma’s Share Price Halves On Trial End, CEO Departure

  La Jolla Pharmaceutical is turning its focus to its lone FDA-approved product and another one in the pipeline after an experimental drug for a rare blood disease failed a late-stage study.

  On Monday, La Jolla Pharma (NASDAQ: LJPC) said it... Read more »

  Sarah de Crescenzo11/26/19

• AI Startup Healx Looks to Find Repurposable Drugs for Rare Diseases

  Off the heels of a $56 million Series B funding round, Cambridge, UK-headquartered Healx is looking to partner with rare disease patient groups to advance treatments toward the clinic.

  The company’s artificial intelligence-powered drug discovery platform, Healnet, uses both public... Read more »

  Melissa Fassbender11/26/19

• PhoenixMD Adds Seed Funding to Test Experimental Breast Cancer Drug

  Phoenix Molecular Designs, a biotech developing kinase inhibitors to treat cancer, has brought in an undisclosed amount of financing—boosting its total seed funding raised to $12 million.

  The San Diego-based biotech says the proceeds will help fund the Phase 1/1b clinical... Read more »

  Melissa Fassbender11/26/19

• Global Blood’s Sickle Cell Drug Wins FDA Approval Ahead of Schedule

  The FDA on Monday approved a Global Blood Therapeutics treatment for sickle cell disease, three months before the agency’s decision was expected.

  Regulators evaluated the drug, voxelotor (Oxbryta), under a pathway that allows for a speedier review using less evidence than... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan11/25/19

• Ferring and Blackstone Team Up to Fund Gene Therapy Firm With $570M

  Ferring Pharmaceuticals and Blackstone Life Sciences have formed a new company to commercialize a bladder cancer gene therapy that is currently in late-stage clinical testing.

  The new company, FerGene, is a subsidiary of Swiss pharmaceutical company Ferring, which is investing $170... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan11/25/19

• Five Questions With a16z’s Vijay Pande on AI and Making New Drugs

  In startup world these days, the word “biotech” is increasingly accompanied by “computational” and two, two-letter initialisms: AI and ML.

  Those tools—artificial intelligence and machine learning, respectively—have been around for decades, but in recent years have become faster and cheaper, accelerating... Read more »

  Sarah de Crescenzo11/25/19

• Novartis to Acquire MedCo and FDA-Ready Cholesterol Drug for $9.7B

  Novartis has agreed to acquire The Medicines Company for $9.7 billion, a cash deal that brings it a compound that is poised to become part of a new wave of cholesterol-lowering drugs.

  With the acquisition, Swiss pharma giant Novartis (NYSE: NVS... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan11/25/19

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• Bio Roundup: So Long Celgene, RNAi’s Arrival, Pharma in 2020 & More

  Bristol-Myers Squibb this week completed its acquisition of Celgene, a $74 billion deal that creates a pharmaceutical juggernaut. And all it took was the largest asset sale ever required by federal antitrust regulators.

  As the Federal Trade Commission reviewed Bristol’s (NYSE:... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan11/22/19

• With Cell-By-Cell Take on Drug Discovery, Immunitas Debuts With $39M

  A cancer tumor is a veritable patchwork of cells with a variety of genetic fingerprints.

  Immunitas Therapeutics is using single-cell genomics—an approach that studies the genetic activity of individual cells—to peer deeply into patient tumors and more precisely determine what is... Read more »

  Sarah de Crescenzo11/21/19

• Alnylam Gets Quick FDA OK for Second RNAi Rare Disease Drug

  [Updated 11/21/19, 10:05 a.m. See below.] An Alnylam Pharmaceuticals drug developed to treat a rare, inherited metabolic disorder won FDA approval on Wednesday, the second regulatory nod the company has received for a drug that turns off a gene... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan11/20/19

• Liquid Biopsy Firm Lucence Plans Bay Area Buildout With $20M in Tow

  Lucence, a genomic medicine company developing blood-based tests for cancer screening and treatment selection, announced this week the close of a $20 million Series A funding round led by IHH Healthcare.

  CEO and founder Min-Han Tan (pictured) says the investment will... Read more »

  Melissa Fassbender11/20/19

• Biopharma Execs Remain Optimistic Despite Political Headwinds

  Drug pricing debates and uncertainty associated with Brexit are the issues most likely to keep biopharmaceutical executives awake at night. Nevertheless, senior figures remain optimistic about the industry’s prospects in 2020. These are among the major findings of a survey of... Read more »

  Mike Ward11/20/19

• France-Based Tissium Boosts US Work After Closing €38.75M Series B

  Tissium is targeting Boston’s biotech scene to advance its platform of proprietary biopolymers after building out its manufacturing capabilities in France.

  Backed by a €38.75 million ($42.78 million) Series B funding round, the company is moving forward with several development programs... Read more »

  Melissa Fassbender11/20/19

• Myovant to Seek FDA OK on Pill to Treat Advanced Prostate Cancer

  A drug candidate once shelved by Takeda Pharmaceutical (NYSE: TAK) has found new life within Roivant Sciences spinout Myovant as a potential once-daily oral hormone therapy for patients with advanced prostate cancer.

  The Brisbane, CA-based biotech company (MYSE: MYOV)... Read more »

  Sarah de Crescenzo11/19/19

• Reata Rakes In $505M to Advance Development of Two Rare Disease Drugs

  Reata Pharmaceuticals on Tuesday closed a stock sale, raising $505.1 million to advance the company’s two lead drug candidates to regulatory review.

  Reata’s stock price jumped last week after the company announced its investigational drug, bardoxolone methyl (bard), met the main... Read more »

  Melissa Fassbender11/19/19

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