BioSpace News Archive

Despite President Trump circling around semi-regularly to bash the pharmaceutical industry and drug prices, biotech stocks seem to be doing pretty well. The Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF, called the IBB, is up about 17 percent so far this year.

Recent studies in early diagnostics underline just how much focus medical technology companies are making on developing different modalities for very early cancer diagnosis. Here are just some recent examples.

Maryland-based Neuraly surged forth from the startup gate with $36 million in Series A funding that will finance the company’s research into the development of therapies for neurodegenerative disorders.

Swiss pharma giant Novartis is halting planned price increases on its medications after President Donald Trump took Pfizer to task over price hikes earlier this month. Pfizer agreed to roll back its price increases last week.

In April Bay Area biotech Revolution Medicines completed its pivot from a company focused on antifungal treatments to an oncology business. This morning Revolution’s shift paid off with a development deal worth up to $500 million with Sanofi.

Pfizer and Eli Lilly released results from its 16-week Phase III clinical trial in patients with osteoarthritis (OA) pain receiving a subcutaneous dose of tanezumab. The drug hit all three co-primary endpoints.

HIV patients have some good news this morning. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Janssen Pharmaceutical’s Symtuza, the first and only complete darunavir-based single-tablet regimen (STR) for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1).

French biotech company Servier is setting up shop in Boston following its April deal to acquire Shire’s oncology business for $2.4 billion.

Rubius Therapeutics, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has set the price of its initial public offering at $23 per share.

In 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) created Breakthrough Therapy designation. The Washington Post reports on a new study conducted by Yale School of Medicine researchers and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that looks at the designation and the drugs that received it.