BioSpace News Archive

The notorious legacy of OxyContin continues to be a major black mark against Purdue Pharmaceuticals. And that mark is only getting worse as a court case against the opioid manufacturer has revealed company officials used deceptive marketing practices to boost sales of the drug.

Autolus Therapeutics, based in London, UK, announced plans to locate its U.S. headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. In addition to the headquarters, it will have all U.S.-based research and development, commercial and corporate functions and a first full commercial-scale manufacturing center at the location.

A study published in Clinical Chemistry earlier this month has linked sperm with more DNA damage to repeated miscarriages. Recurring miscarriages, defined as three or more consecutive miscarriages before 20 weeks of pregnancy, occur in 1-2 percent of couples.

Noting that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expects more than 200 investigational new drug applications (INDs) by 2020 per year, many of them cell and gene therapies, the agency issued an outline of new procedures it plans to implement this year.

Based in South San Francisco, Five Prime Therapeutics announced that as part of a restructuring program, it will eliminate 41 current jobs, or about 20 percent of its current headcount. The positions cut will be mostly in areas related to research, pathology and manufacturing. The company expects a decrease in net cash this year, with savings coming in 2020.

Shares of Illinois-based Aptinyx Inc. have plunged more than 67 percent in premarket trading after the company announced its mid-stage treatment for painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy failed to show statistical significance.

On Jan. 11, President Donald Trump announced via Twitter that 2018 was marked by a decline in prescription drug prices – the first time that had happened in 50 years. Also, the president said that Americans saved $26 billion on drug prices in the first 19 months of his presidency.

Although that is good news, cancer is the second-most common cause of death in the U.S., with more than 1.7 million new cancer cases each year and more than 600,000 cancer deaths. The report notes that one of the biggest factors in decreased cancer rates are lower tobacco smoking rates.

Don Patterson, Westmont professor of computer science, and a team of scientists in Southern California are working to detect cerebral palsy (CP) in preterm babies.

The synthetic and fully resorbable TIGR®Matrix surgical mesh (Novus Scientific AB, Uppsala − Sweden) might be an interesting candidate for the prevention of complications frequently observed with permanent mesh placement, according to Professor Johan Lange of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam − the Netherlands.